A Donegal farmer has been met with a highly unusual birth of twin female donkeys on his farm in Drumholme, Co. Donegal, to one of his donkeys named Nellie.

Farmer Philip Timoney is thrilled with what happened and had compared their births to winning the lottery, according to RTÉ. He has been a farmer for 45 years.

Twin donkey births are statistically very unlikely given that only 1.5 percent of mares have twins and few survive these births.

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A farmer and his family in Drumholme, Co Donegal are celebrating a very rare birth on their farm - twin donkeys | https://t.co/2QKN4LWv0Z pic.twitter.com/9PUhfUiaPf

— RTÉ News (@rtenews) May 31, 2018

“Oh, there was great excitement here yesterday. We couldn’t believe it. There’s other donkeys in the field so we thought maybe it was one of theirs, but we had seen the two [twins] following the one mare,” Timoney told RTÉ.

“The mum’s name is Nellie, but I think I’m going to name the two babies Bella and Ella,” his granddaughter expressed.

However, his grandson felt differently about the matter, saying, “I want to name them something like the mother, then they’ll all be matching.”

“I couldn’t tell you what it means to me, it means a lot to me… I’ve been very fond of donkeys over the years. I’ve had loads of donkeys, actually,” Timoney concluded.

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