RUPERT the sick lamb is being nursed back to health after being "rescued" by an animal rights campaigner during a heated protest outside an auction mart.

Carol Duggan was demonstrating against a sheep sale at Gisburn Auction Mart when an angry farmer's wife unexpectedly told her to take the lamb "if she really cared".

The lamb - believed to be less than a week old -was dumped into her hands after Carol said she would be happy to give it a home.

At first, she feared the lamb might have to be put down because it was unable to stand. She rushed it to a vet for emergency treatment. Carol, a member of Compassion in World Farming, said: "We were arguing with the woman for about 20 minutes. She was saying she had been up all night hand rearing a lamb and she claimed we wouldn't be prepared to do it. She asked us to take the lamb if we really cared. I think she thought we would say no."

The woman went back to her farm and returned with the lamb to give to Carol.

Carol, who already has six rescued cats at her Oswaldtwistle home, took the lamb - named Rupert by the protesters - to Brian Holroyd Veterinary Surgeon, Blackburn.

She explained: "He was not able to stand up and I thought he had been paralysed during birth. But the vet said he was weak because he had not had his mother's first milk.

"She gave him antibiotics for an infection and he is now on a course of penicillin. He is being fed reconstituted ewe's milk to get his strength up.

"I am going to rear him until he is strong enough to go out. I will then try to look for a suitable home for him - he is certainly not going to the slaughterhouse." She and other placard-waving protesters were demonstrating against the twice-monthly store stock sale.

They claim ewes should be left in the fields with their lambs and fear the animals are poorly treated during transportation.

Carol, a veteran of animal protests around the country, said: "We believe the transport of ewes with lambs to and from the sale causes trauma for the animals. It is inhumane to treat such young animals in this way.

"We are not against farming, but we object to factory farming. We know animals are reared for their meat, but we just want them to have a good quality of life."

A Gisburn Auction Mart spokesman said no one was prepared to comment on the protest.

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