Shropshire mystery as lamb baa-rn on the fourth of J-ewe-ly
She was baa-rn on the fourth of July, two months after lambing season and it's a mystery where she came from.
Scotty the lamb is remarkable in many ways, not least because she appeared so late in the year – but how she was conceived in the first place is also an enigma, since her owners didn't even know her mother was pregnant.
Hollie Woodhouse, 29, a freelance groom and gardener from Hopton Bank, near Cleobury Mortimer, said only about one in 500 lambs were born this late in the year.
But Scotty the lamb was even more special, she said. "The lamb just came out of nowhere," said Miss Woodhouse.
"It was just there one morning. The mother is white, a Hebridean cross Welsh, but it came out black and creamy coloured, which is really unusual. We don't know what the father is. The ewe had been sheared a week before and we hadn't noticed it was pregnant."
She said Louise Brown, who owns the rented field Scotty was born in at Oaklands, Hopton Bank, found her on the morning of July 4 – America's Independence Day.
Miss Woodhouse is the daughter of farmer Greg Woodhouse of Little Wickets Farm, Hopton Bank, so knows a bit about sheep and lambing.
"It is quite unusual for them to be born this time of year," she said.
She said it wasn't impossible for ewes to conceive late, however.
"They don't stop being fertile, they keep going until they get pregnant.
"We call the mother Elvis because she's got what looks like sideburns.She must have gone to a tup in February."
"The ewes went away over Christmas, until about a month ago. There was no male among them, so a stray ram must have found them."
