Lucky twins for lamb that cheated death

Lucky the sheep (formally known as Lucky the lamb) is now the family pet and she's just had twins of her own. Abby, 17, Morgan, 13, and Jessica, 18, with Jet, Lucky and Rocket. Photo/John Borren

A chance intervention has continued the remarkable good fortunes of a plucky ewe that was dubbed "New Zealand's luckiest lamb".

Lucky was given her name when she cheated death after plunging 6m into a deep offal pit on a farm at Omokoroa in 2014.

After her ordeal she became a family pet and has now become a mum herself producing twins - much to the delight of Pip Lusby and her teenage children.

But Lucky's offspring would almost certainly have perished had it not been for Mrs Lusby's quick-thinking daughter Jess. The 18-year-old had gone to the paddock to check on the ewes and found a frail and shivering new-born lamb with Lucky standing nearby not being at all attentive to its needs.

"Being a new mum she didn't know what to do. She was looking around and not focusing on the baby," said Mrs Lusby.

"It was really, really cold. We had to encourage her to keep licking the baby. Jess said, 'I wonder if she's going to have twins'.

"Almost as soon as she said it this other baby shot out and landed on Jess's boot. There had been no signs, nothing, then boof, out it flew. It shot out like a rocket, so now we've named the lamb Rocket."

The second lamb was undersized and the family faced an anxious time trying to get Lucky to bond with her newborn lambs. The struggling pair were bottle fed while a horse float became a temporary nursery, with mum and twins bedded down on hay.

"If we hadn't intervened she would probably have lost both the lambs as they were not robust," added Mrs Lusby.

For the Lusby family the lambs' arrival rekindled memories of Lucky's troubled start to life. Her rescue from a deep offal-filled pit used for farm waste was an amazing story of faith and hope overcoming extremely long odds.

Lucky had squeezed through a tiny gap on a cover over the pit.

The distressed animal's bleating sparked a race against time to free it for Mrs Lusby and her children. They lowered a rope, lassoed the stuck lamb - but as they hauled it up it slipped and fell back into the hole and everyone feared the worst. With hope fading the Christian family stopped to pray for a successful outcome.

When they tried again they immediately slipped a knotted rope around the 3-day-old's head and hauled it up in one go.

"The kids absolutely adore Lucky, they love her to bits. She's a good pet and they are always out there playing with her and running around with her," said Mrs Lusby.