FIVE-legged lamb spared from the dinner table

While there are many who would have seen the five-legged Texel breed lamb providing an extra few slices of meat for Sunday lunch, the unusual deformity means the youngster will live out her days as a cherished pet.

Farming sisters Yolanda and Angela Jewitt have decided to keep the lamb after she was born two weeks ago and given her a fitting name - Hope.

The sisters have created a comfy haven for the lamb out of a barrel filled with straw so she can sleep in the kitchen of their farm near Tow Law in County Durham.

"At birth, a lot of people would have killed her but we didn't - we thought we would given her a chance and it is great," Yolanda, 52, told the Northern Echo.

"She gets up and runs about. She can do everything, and drinks her bottle of milk.

"She has got three perfect front legs with three shoulders. She bounces around and plays. She is like a normal sheep with an extra leg.

"It is very unusual. You don't get many sheep like this that are alive. She is very, very cute."

As the pictures show, Hope enjoys being fed by bottle as well as gambolling in grassy fields.

Although her condition - known as polymelia - is rare in other other animals, sheep with extra limbs are reported from around the world on a near annual basis with recent cases in the Netherlands, New Zealand and Nigeria.