Meet Forrest - the five-legged lamb

A rare five-legged lamb has been born at a farm in Derbyshire and named after Forrest Gump to inspire him to run.

The Texel Mule cross was born on Thursday morning and farm owner Mark Bayley named him after the Tom Hanks character.

Forrest Gump, the central character in the Robert Zemeckis film of the same name, spends three and a half years running back and forth from one coast of America to the other. 

Mr Bayley said although it was tempting to sell Forrest for meat, he would probably be kept as a family pet.

Despite having five legs the lamb is perfectly healthy.

The extra limb, which sits just behind Forrest's left front leg, is slightly shorter than the other four so is not interfering with his mobility at the farm in Ashbourne.

Mr Bayley told the BBC: "It's happy – drinking, running around. I spoke to a vet briefly and they said all seemed fine.

"It's a bit of a novelty for me and the children and their friends so it'll probably become a pet."

In 2015 a similar lamb was born in Wales and called Jake.

In 2013, a lamb called Quinto was born in Whitehouse Farm Centre in Morpeth with an additional front limb. Her fifth limb was removed in 2014, and in February, Quinto gave birth to Susie and Sophie. Neither have extra limbs.

Other five-legged lambs have been reported in France over recent years and earlier this month another was born in Turkey.