A tiny lamb has been declared a "miracle" after surviving his birth despite being just 15cm tall and weighing just over 2lbs. The little survivor has been affectionately named Newt to reflect his small stature.
Samantha Matthews, who swapped her life as a midwife in Essex to be a shepherd in Wales, had no idea he would be so small when he was born on March 5 at her farm in Brecon and she thought he was the placenta at first glance. She explained: "His mum is a Shetland sheep, which are quite small anyway as a breed.
"She was due to have twins and the first one was a regular size, looked really good, then we were waiting for the second and I thought the placenta must have come out. She didn't seem to notice."
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However, after further inspection, Samantha quickly realised that the second lamb had in fact been born. "When I reached down to look it was a little lamb and he's rather tiny bless him.
"I've never seen one so small. I don't know if anyone else has. I'm sure there will be someone that could outdo him but I've never seen anything that small – he's ridiculously small."
Quick intervention was needed from Samantha to get Newt off on the right foot as he was too small in stature to feed from his mother and the smallest feeding tube she had was still too small for the newborn. "It took us a while to get him breathing but he did," Samantha said, "Once he got going he was really good."
Little Newt did have to be removed from his mother as his small stature put him at risk. "She was being a good mum, she kept pawing him to get up and feed, but obviously he was too weak to do that and he could barely reach her udder anyway. She'd kill him with love."
Thankfully mum was more than settled with Newt's brother who Samantha estimates is "four or five times bigger" than his twin. "She's quite happy with him so we've put [Newt] on a bottle and he's our bottle baby now. He's a little fighter. He's not out of the woods yet and anything could happen but so far so good and he gets on well with his friends."
