YAKIMA — Jenny Snyder expects her ewes to start giving birth around this time every year. She expects to see twins and even triplets at her West Valley farm and knows what to do.
So when quadruplets arrived about 4 p.m. Tuesday, she knew their mother would need even more help. Snyder brought three lambs into her house for bottle feeding because their mother could nurse only one. She put them in a small pen near the fireplace so they’d stay warm. She made sure they had stuffed animals to cuddle.
“They love when you put stuffed animals in with them,” Snyder said.
It’s common for ewes to have twins, and it’s not uncommon for them to have triplets. But quadruplets come just once in about 500 births, Snyder said. Even more unusual is if all four survive and thrive — once every 1,000 births — as these four females are. All are “very healthy and very cute,” Snyder said.
“That’s Tammy Faye,” she said, pointing to a lamb with black rings around its eyes. She named the other two indoor quadruplets Sarah and Sally. “The one in the barn doesn’t have a name yet,” she added. Nor does their 3-year-old mother.
“They say a quarter of the lambs don’t live. We do better because we bring some inside,” Snyder said. “The ones we raise in the house have names.”
The three inside joined another lamb — a triplet that needs to be bottle-fed — while the fourth stayed outside with its mother.
“We’ve had so many lambs,” Snyder said. “That’s what sheep do. They all have them at the same time.”
On Friday, daughter Julia Snyder estimated that at least 21 lambs had been born on the Snyder farm in the past five days, since around the time of the most recent full moon.
Jenny Snyder and her husband, Dr. Mark Snyder, a cardiothoracic surgeon, and their family moved to their 28-acre farm off Englewood Drive in 1970. He died on April 8, 2011.
Over the years, the Snyders and their three children have cared for countless animals on the high property that includes the main house, a few rental homes and a pond stocked with trout.
Along with “probably” 87 sheep, which Julia Snyder said includes the lambs, the current critter census is about 75 chickens, numerous cats and dogs, a raucous group of about 25 peacocks, four guineas and an 11-year-old red-headed Amazon parrot that wolf-whistles and says “Hi, dog!”
An emu that liked to wander nearby orchards died of old age a few years ago, and the family used to have more horses than Snyder does now.
“We only have one horse, one pony and one donkey,” she said. “But I board horses.”
Son Douglas traveled from North Carolina to help with the farm, as he does every six months or so, and Julia Snyder recently moved back to Yakima from Seattle. She was busy caring for a newborn on Friday.
“I feel really happy for this mother who had quadruplets,” Julia Snyder said. “Last year, she had twins.”
Jenny Snyder beamed as she stood nearby and held a lamb in her arms. The others bleated and wagged their stubby tails as they tumbled around the fireside pen.
“It’s so cute when they start jumping around and playing,” she said.
