Te Karaka farmer’s emergency caesarean saves four lambs

Farmer Hayden Burgess with his granddad Brian Wallace, son Lachlan Burgess and the four lambs delivered by an emergency caesarean section that beat their odds for survival.

It’s not unusual for a ewe to give birth to four lambs, but the way these particular four came into the world was anything but ordinary.

Te Karaka farmer Hayden Burgess had been checking his flock regularly towards the end of winter as it was lambing season.

On one round, he found a ewe stuck in the mud, likely trapped for a few hours since his last check. She was in lamb but her milk hadn’t come in yet – a sign she might not be ready to deliver.

Burgess gently freed her and laid her under a tree.

“We knew she was in lamb, so for two days we tried to get her standing again,” he said.

“It was tough – we didn’t know when she’d lamb, and she had no milk.

“The ewe had used all her energy just to keep herself and her lambs alive.”

By the third day, the ewe still couldn’t stand. The decision was made to euthanise her.

Hayden’s partner Jaimee, a vet nurse, stepped in to perform an emergency caesarean, with their 6-week-old son Hadley in tow.

She had performed caesareans on ewes before but there’d been minimal success and they weren’t hopeful the lambs would survive this time either.

To their astonishment, four lambs emerged – alive, alert and standing within minutes.

“The timing was spot on,” she said. “Any longer and they wouldn’t have made it.”

Hayden, 23, and Jaimee, 27, were thrilled. So was their 2-year-old son Lachlan, who missed the drama while at kindergarten but now loves bottle-feeding the lambs.

Lachlan Burgess loves feeding two of the four lambs that survived a dramatic rescue on his family's farm in Te Karaka.

“It’s not unheard of to have four lambs,” Hayden said.

“But the way it happened, and that all four survived, was remarkable.”

The couple had cow colostrum stored in the freezer and fed the lambs every two hours, tucking them under the heat pump in the dining room for their first night.

By midnight, the boisterous lambs were trying to escape so Hayden got up and let them outside, and they’ve been ranging free ever since.

Now 5 weeks old, they’re down to two bottle feeds a day.

The Burgess family have owned the property, which consists of some flats and steeper hill country, for five years.

The property sits in the hills behind Te Karaka, about 40 minutes from Gisborne in one of the region’s most beautiful pockets.

The young family raise 150 to 200 calves a year, a few sheep, and tend to a citrus orchard.