In the end Baroness was the first to pop - which she quite literally looked like she would! While I was sat up in the field watching a ewe in the process of lambing I kept receiving excited updates via walkie-talkie that she was having another, and another, and another!
Perhaps unsurprisingly, several of the kids were small and weak, and very slow to get going. Some needed some extra powdered colostrum to ensure they were getting enough energy to get them through their first night. Unfortunately, despite this, two were hypothermic and not feeding by the morning and we had to bring them back to the house to get warm. One vet visit, tube feeding, steroid injections and intraperitoneal glucose later and they were still alive... just.
Over the next few days we had to tube feed them a few more times before we managed to get them back to suckling from their mother - although in between times they were still living in a dog crate in the kitchen. Baroness allowed them to feed for another week before she decided enough was enough and, despite feeding her other three kids, would not let these two latch on any more. From that point on it was over to us and the bottle.
It took another three weeks to get them strong enough to spend days out in a pen in the shed and another fortnight before they graduated to a grassy paddock. Bottle feeding has slowly reduced from every three hours to four times a day and they are starting to accelerate their weight gain.
Two of the other three kids are also doing well and still with Baroness and the other nannies, but sadly one of them died suddenly one evening. We heard a strange noise form the barn, checked straightaway and only had enough time to scoop up the kid, rush back inside and get hold of a stomach tube before it died - likely from abomasal bloat, which some sources say has 99% mortality.
But, the chance of quintuplets is around 1 in 10,000 to begin with and even then most don't have five live kids. So to have four, and still have the two weak ones going, is a very rare thing.
