Farmer saves five-legged sheep with online sale

Yvan Delage, a farmer near the southwestern town of Condéon, has melted the hearts of internet users across France, saving an unusual sheep from slaughter by putting her up for auction on the French equivalent of Craigslist.

“For sale: Atypical sheep with five legs” reads the classified ad on Le Boncoin, a French website similar to Craigslist.

“The fifth leg is an atrophy. It doesn’t serve any purpose, but it’s not a handicap in any way. Nine-month-old female. Price negotiable,” says the ad, posted online on Saturday.

It might seem strange to begin with that Delage, who rears and sells around 150 sheep for slaughter each year, would think twice about this one.

But the odd-one-out appears to have won his heart. “I have no desire to have her killed,” Delage told local newspaper Charente Libre on Monday.

Confessing that he wanted to “save her from the abattoir,” the farmer in the Charente department added that he’d prefer to see the sheep end her days “in a park somewhere, or in a school.”

Anyone wishing to adopt the wooly anomaly, and write the next chapter in this fairytale, however, will need to shell out at least €200 to Delage, according to Charente Libre.