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UNDERHILL, Vt. — <\/span>Anne O’Connor just kept counting sheep, and it made her anything but sleepy.<\/p>\n A sheep owned by O’Connor, who runs Clover & Bee Farm in Underhill, Vermont, with her husband, Gunnar, gave birth to a rare batch of six lambs earlier this month. The sextuplets and their mother are all doing well, making the lamb windfall even more remarkable.<\/p>\n The same ewe previously had quadruplets, and while a recent checkup indicated she would have two lambs this time, O’Connor suspected more. When the big day came, the baby lambs seemed to have kept coming and coming, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a little bit suspicious, just given how big she was and that she was going a little earlier, that she might have more than two,\u201d she said. \u201cSix is great, but it’s definitely \u2014 it’s plenty.\u201d<\/p>\n Sources differ on how uncommon sheep sextuplets are, with O’Connor putting the number around 1 in 1,000 and some agricultural websites placing it at one in a million or higher. O’Connor said she has been in touch with the Vermont Sheep & Goat Association about the births, and the group found only one other shepherd had a sheep give birth to so many lambs.<\/p>\n \u201cThey do take longer to reach full body weight, but most do just fine,\u201d said Kristen Judkins of Gilead Fiber Farm, who owned a ewe that had sextuplets three years in a row, in an email. \u201cYou have to keep an eye on them for the first few weeks to make sure they are getting enough to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n The lambs, which are partially the Finnsheep breed, are named the numbers one through six in Finnish. Their mother is named Teemu after Finnish hockey player and Hockey Hall of Famer Teemu Sel\u00e4nne. The O’Connors plan to keep the four ewes and find homes for the two male lambs.<\/p>\n The farm raises sheep for wool and also grows herbs and berries. It’s headed for its fifth summer raising sheep. The flock is booming \u2014 along with two other recent babies, the six new lambs have brought the total up to 21. And five ewes are currently pregnant.<\/p>\n Teemu’s breeding days are likely not over. She’ll be allowed a respite, but odds are good she’ll have more lambs in the future, O’Connor said.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s a great mom, she\u2019s doing awesome with this,\u201d O’Connor said. \u201cShe\u2019s still very much in her reproductive years, so probably a year or more and she\u2019ll just, you know, be able to put her hooves up.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Whittle reported from Portland, Maine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n