A COUNTY Durham farm is celebrating the birth of a second set of quadruplet lambs this spring.

The latest Texel-Mule crosses were born at Killerby Hall Farm, Killerby, on Thursday of last week. They followed a set of quads born to another ewe in the same flock last month.

Margaret Stobbs, 57, who runs the farm with son Mark, 31, said they did not realise the ewe was going to give birth to quads. "Normally we'd get them scanned but we don't tend to since foot-and-mouth because we don't have as many sheep," she said.

She said they would take two of the lambs from the mother. "Four are too many for a ewe to handle.

"If there's a ewe which has miscarried a lamb and has got milk, then we tie her head up and put two lambs in with her, so that they start to smell like her and she accepts them as her own."

Mrs Stobbs took over the running of the farm, which is part of Lord Barnard's estate and has been run by the Stobbs family for generations, when her husband died in 1985