A "one in a million" set of lamb quintuplets have been born on a farm in Co Cavan.
The five lambs arrived safely last Friday on Brian and Mary O'Brien's farm just outside Cavan town.
Their son, Breifne O'Brien, said that their flock of ewes had been scanned just after Christmas and showed an "exceptionally high scan rate", with lots of triplets and some quadruplets expected.
They suspected that one of their ewes was carrying five lambs, but were not quite sure.
Breifne described how the ewe had delivered four lambs, and when they looked again, there was a fifth, "the tiniest lamb you've ever seen".
He said the lamb was "perfect, but a little bit weak", and they were not sure if he was going to make it.
After a while under some heat, he said the lamb started bleating and thankfully, all five lambs have been going "from strength to strength" ever since.
The O'Briens are helping out with feeding some extra bottles of milk to the quintuplets, while the ewe is "proud as punch of her litter of lambs".
Breifne said that the odds of a ewe delivering five healthy lambs are said to be "one in a million".
"We've never had it here before. You'd often hear of ewes doing four, but five healthy live lambs is very uncommon. There's lots of hardship and trials and tribulations when you're lambing or calving, so it's nice when it goes your way", he said.
