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Jake the five-legged lamb has a new best mate – Zorro the masked bandit sheep of Mid Wales.

The pair, born just two days apart on the same farm near Lake Vyrnwy have become the odd couple of the agricultural world.

While Jake became a worldwide sensation after being born with an extra leg , Zorro has led a quieter life despite having a crescent-shaped half-black face.

Both are inseparable in the fields at Rhiwlas farm, Llanwddyn, Powys.

"They are part of a gang of teaser tups that run riot around the fields,” said farmer’s wife Bethan Lloyd-Davies.

Zorro’s facial features resemble those of Venus the “Chimera Cat” – the feline queen of the internet who has a half-black, half-ginger face.

Like Venus, Jake has launched his own Facebook page after capturing headlines in April and being courted by American TV.

However the five-legged lamb has some catching up to do – he has just 400 "likes" on Facebook compared with Venus’ one million.

At one time Jake was getting a lot of fan mail

Bethan hopes this will change. “When he was born there was a lot of publicity but we didn’t take any money from the newspapers and magazines,” she said.

"I am now thinking of approaching a publisher to see if there’s any interest in Jake being the star of a children’s book.

“At one time he was getting a lot of fan mail. We had several packages of cards from primary schoolchildren wishing him good luck, mostly from North Wales.

“He answered every single letter he received.”

He's just like any other ordinary sheep

Few lambs born with five legs survive beyond the first few hours and the Lloyd-Davies family initially wondered if they should have Jake put down.

But he has thrived, even though vets decided it would be too dangerous to have the extra limb removed.

He was named after the nursery rhyme Jake The Peg.

“We don’t see the extra leg as a handicap,” said Bethan.

Read: Baaarking mad! Amazing pictures of the Snowdonia lamb that thinks it's a dog

“It’s not weight-supporting and it is still a bit dangly, but he can do everything that the other lambs can do.

“The only concession was a separate feeder that we put in place for him, just in case he hurt his leg trying to feed with the others.”

Put to work on the farm

On October 28 Jake underwent a vasectomy so that he could join the farm’s team of 20 teaser tups and work for a living.

His role will be to stimulate ewes to ovulate so that lambing is condensed into a shorter, more manageable period.

Working alongside him will be Zorro.

Both were sired by a Beltex ram, one of several breeds kept at the beef and sheep farm.

In both cases the mother was a North Country Mule, which probably accounts for Zorro’s distinctive facial markings.

“It looks like it has been painted on,” said Bethan.

CNN wanted us to take him to America to appear on TV

“We often get lambs with odd markings, such as a black leg or black ear, but this is the first time we’ve seen something so distinctive.

“Each year around 1,600 lambs are born on the farm, so it stands to reason that we will get a few oddities from time to time.

“These are usually kept apart from the commercial flock and kept for breeding, in the case of females, or teaser tups if they are males.”

Jake’s early brush with fame saw him feted by newspapers and magazines.

The strangest request came from America – and it left Bethan distinctly unimpressed.

She said: “The CNN news channel wanted to do a feature on Jake, which was fine, but then they insisted we take him to America to appear in the studio.

“I thought that was totally unreasonable and a bit silly – they clearly didn’t understand the animal welfare implications.”