Frozen lamb now a mother in drive to preserve breed

The twin lambs are carrying on a process set in motion in 2001 in the latest attempt to preserve the rare Herdwick breed.

The devastating epidemic that summer prompted Cumbrian farmers to find a way to safeguard the commercially-important breed’s future.

Prof Dianna Bowles worked with the farmers and set up the Sheep Trust during the crisis, which came up with the idea to freeze embryos.

Ten years later, with the outbreak over, Maggie the lamb was born in April 2011.

Now, two years on from Maggie’s birth, the next generation have arrived as Maggie gave birth her own little duo in April this year.

Prof Bowles told how Maggie suddenly became ill in October last year. Her owner, Margaret Hall, asked the Sheep Trust to look after her and she quickly became pregnant the following month.

Prof Bowles, 65, a lecturer at York University and founder and chair of the Sheep Trust, said it was all thanks to science that Maggie has given birth to her own young.

“This just goes to show that science is evolving everyday and to think this would happen 12 years after the height of the foot-and-mouth epidemic is astronomical,” she said.

Maggie was born and raised with the help of schoolgirl Evie Church, now 15, who was integral in rearing and looking after the ewe.

Evie vowed to help fight foot and mouth disease on her father’s farm in the village of Lofthouse in the Yorkshire Dales after her father told her terrible stories of affected animals being culled.