ACCORDING to the nursery rhyme it was Mary who had a little lamb that followed her to school.
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But yesterday it was Jack Couch and Olivia Lenehan, from Warrnambool’s St Pius X Primary School, who were followed everywhere by 16-week-old lambs Bessie and Penny.
Preps at the school adopted the orphaned twin lambs from Cooramook sheep farmer Peter McDonald as part of their term four studies on animals.
The children fed the lambs milk, and later hay, and regularly checked their feed and water.
Prep teacher Jenna Osborne said the children began caring for their lambs when they were seven weeks old and have raised them for nine weeks.
She said 18 families at the school had volunteered to feed them on weekends.
Yesterday the lambs went back to Mr McDonald, who will keep them as pets.
Ms Osborne said the children had done a terrific job with the lambs and the task had helped them appreciate the needs of others.
“They’re caring for someone else the way their parents care for them,” she said. “They’ve been so good with the sheep.”
The lambs have been kept in a little paddock at the school.
Mr McDonald shows sheep at the Warrnambool show and next year the children will go to the show to see how they are getting on.