Sosshenbereaete eosenserecess og i cow ae Book __» WV i Heil Copyright ye 7°) wi COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. iter nance «oh dae ~aht e z . ans eae aN A ha ee is mci we er Obs e. le 4 one eo & & " 7 mad Om ee Oe ey RENE er ee < xy ae aoe ma his tipncin tase hein etn JOSEPH E. WING. Sheep Farming In America. @ By JOSEPH E. WING, ‘ Staff Correspondent of The Breeder’s Gazette. @ NEW AND REVISED EDITION. CHICAGO, ILL.: Sanders Publishing Co. 1907. LIBRARY of CONGRESS Two Copies Received MAY 28 1907 MoT Fo t cthss | 4’ wh No. 173 63) COPY B. Copyright, 1907, BY SANDERS PUBLISHING CO. All rights reserved. CONTENTS: PL BUSLRATIONS sire ae ak Meas cake eRe ae Sie 11-12 UPSRAELES Ty Coe] 8 Ch eee ie ee ad RR ey ee iG os. Bemult ae 13-19 INTRODUCTION TO mers Eprt10 sah calhe at thine Awe s Baesaexk 20 CHAPTER I FINE-WoOOoL BREEDS..... eT eee ewes ee ra nbedeeit soe cid crak 21-31 Mermos: 5.5.22... Senne Se cate Se Se RRM i te het ie 22 Pew rea ATOriNOS . .% © & ehh tent. a tee fepckeds eet ee 25 elaine. Mormos and Black Tops... ..:.....55.. cee - 25 RE APIMENRIVELO GS nooo Soros 6 on hela ads dba pelle Sata EERE « 26 CHAPTER II. UU AIIEYE ROM REMRIU NAB 2, obs coca ia rere Wala Se wre eel ola ote LOO Oa Hi eta ne he 82-61 The Downs— PME EMONOMIE esc see Pa eons fa we ALE eae ee 35 PPAR ORES PIERO R oo! Hiwiniars 3 GE cs RAtsINES Sere hd aU ee ae ok 37 SAAMPRHITOS 55 As ork Sa bd boo eae SOR OR 40 CSET 2) |S Ses Rand RM Dey rane ee ERS CN, oO SLRS bl 41 The Long-Wools— RSNCCSOCTS:..2 pil 22'S vase si ae Soe Ae. Sa nig wane 42 OER WUE do cieg cae. aes ee ake eS ds 45 PROUT Serre iss os wes wel Ok edie Doom ee ee OBE 45 DIGTeeG PAOPGS a5 dk SS ote ee a tp melh : 46 The Mountain Breeds— TAT: Se et ee ARE ERE ae EN oe PS 49 CAPAC OS 25), Sots ae «ols 2d wae es Rae IAEA PT 50 Tunis aud Persian Sheep... ......%s . aeeses opp sities 55 AE SELENE ERG 2 oo 2's Sacse sate Seb eck cate ASRS Ce cea 63-71 Cross-Breeding for the Lamb Market...................... 67 Cross-Breeding in Eastern Pastures....................005 69 (5) 6 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. SELECTION AND « MANAGEMENG oso o2., bis eum Gene y ot an we Boe 72-106 Restecking a Farm with SReep 5 6 oe se aac eer eee %2 Selection of the Rams: ce: ek PS Ss ee a Redon 7 TOGpINS BEY PGs. 6:50 5 opeteae Bm bide aes cn V7 BWrsine Py pe oss... oie eee tee eee sss 2 stn eee 82 Renewed Vitality from Presh“Blood: 3.05 553.00. 32750 se cee 86 Vitality the Thine to‘ Strive tory. 4 one.2 ss os lose ee 87 Selection OF iNG-PIWes. cite A oe ABS vee coo we oe ce aan 88 Getting Heme with the Plock.2. o2522 50... tail. eee oe 90 Importance Of Dippime |. So) Sut oso hie as ee 90 The Scab Germ ..2..555.52.4 0: Sahih tags Treen, doetehy peti = 91 Phe Dinpie: Vali. 5.5 oust ho yee tases igs eke Rea ce eee tee 93 Regular Dipping of the Farm Flock....................... 95 Summa Py Or pias iiss Ee oe Se ae ais eas Ce eae 97 Fall Treatment-of the Wwe Wiock. oo. oo. . ..ea 5 eae 97 ia bine 25 3588 i Sng ED ars ae niece ane See, ae cae ened 98 Putting in Ghe Ham. peri. fic eos say one Glam eee eee 100 Management of the Ram..................... i ee ean 100 Care of the Presnant BNwe, . 3... 4/0258 sos eee 103 CHAPTER V. CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB..............0.2see00 107-150 AA OT SE: Dy ieae Bey | arg amen as: aelne se ee or ANG Md tears ae Phi An aE Re eos 107 Cars at-Lambine "Ermer 55 oa aies cared owe yc clases ass ee 113 Feeding of the Ewe After Lambing........................ 118 Troubles of ‘Young Eanmvhood. |... 8. s. oae-s = pee ee ee 122 Sore Mouth ‘snd Peatss ocho ae aw ee eek tes ee ee 123 Feeding the Lambs 2 o.oo e205 ise cake were che ead STA date ee eee ae 124 iPeedine for ihe Market rsa oi oe oe las eis 128 Dressing Lambs for Fancy Winter Market................ 135 Treatment of the Late-born Lambs......................-. 138 Feeding Corn 0nGrass. oo... i. S50 ces pad = ce eee 141 Summer Suades vocab ce ewes os ee era debe pe eee 142 Marketing the Spring Lamps. . 23.45... s «% NS : & 4 MUTTON BREEDS. 55 his son, and just above his cottage began a great mountain pasture, enclosed by stone walls, where there were bits of moors from which peat was dug, and great slopes of heather, which is a small, fine and dense-growing bush on which sheep can subsist. Would that we could implant upon our own soil some such spirit as pervaded this place, the quiet and peace, the simple living and high, manly thinking, the honesty and de- votion to duty! THE TUNIS AND PERSIAN SHEEP. In Asia and Africa began the first civiliza- tions, and there perhaps began the first domesti- eation of the sheep. It is a curious fact that we do not now know whence came the ancestors of our various breeds of sheep, nor do we know certainly whether they all have a common an- eestry, though we may infer that it is so from the fact of their readily interbreeding with each other. All of the wild breeds of sheep at pres- ent have short tails, whereas most domesticated sheep have long tails. It is probable that the wild race from which sprung our flocks of to- day is extinct. However, it is interesting to note what ad- vance has been made by the Asiatic and African breeders of sheep and goats. The Nubian goat is probably the most developed in milking power and fecundity of all breeds of goats and the Per- sian and African sheep have also strong devel- opment in certain ways fitting them to the cli- mates and environments in which they were pro- duced and to the needs of their owners. 56 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. The Persian and Tunis sheep have evidently common origins and belong to the same race. In truth it would seem to the writer that the Tu- nis breed which has existed in America since about 1799 and which now may need some infu- sion of fresh blood might with advantage receive an infusion of Persian blood. The Tunis came to America early in the last eentury, and was bred near Philadelphia, and afterwards in South Carolina and Georgia where they proved to be well adapted to the en- vironment. The civil war almost destroyed them. A few survived and were shown at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Soon there- after some enthusiastic admirers began breeding these sheep in Indiana. It is possible that in their time of adversity the blood of the Tunis was not kept quite unmixed, since there is more variety in type among them than is usual among pure breeds. The distinguishing character of the Tunis breed is the head, which should be hornless, cov- ered with tawny yellowish brown hair the nose may incline to roman character, the ear should droop and be rather heavy. The form is much like other mutton sheep except that the legs are usually long and the neck the same. The fleece is soft, fine, fairly abundant, and varies much in eolor; it may be white, or brown, or reddish, or the colors may be intermixed. In the Persian the same characteristics are noted, with a lhke- hhood of black predominating. The distinguishing feature of the Tunis is the fat tail. This seems to have been originally . MUTTON BREEDS. 59 planned as a store-house to tide the animal over periods of drought and bad pasturage. When tails are not docked they are moderately long and the fleshy part hangs down about six or eight inches. This is so inconvenient at the breeding season that ewes usually have their tails docked, besides there is in the United States no popular clamor for fat tails, which are in African and Asiatic regions considered very de- licious and are used in place of butter. When the tails are docked there is yet an ac- cumulation of fat across the top of the rump. Tunis sheep fatten very readily and their lambs are especially quick to become plump and ready for the fancy hot-house lamb trade. It is for this purpose that they are mostly used, though the Tunis rams crossed upon almost any breed of ewes get good lambs. The Persian sheep were introduced into the United States in 1891 and bred in California, Nevada and other Western States. They are very large, very active, good feeders on the range, and when crossed on Merinos the lambs prove to be very easily fattened. Of a herd of half-blood Persian-Merino ewes a California owner says: ‘‘They are omnivorous feeders and great rustlers for food. If there is anything be- tween heaven and earth to eat they will get it.’’ The writer has observed a tendency among some Persians to foot disease when kept on wet soils. They are true sheep of the desert, and there they would seem to have a useful place. Among the breeds described the would-be sheep owner can choose one and he should stick 60 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. to that one. Cross-breeding is permissible for the market, but let no one undertake at this day to create a new breed of sheep by mingling the bloods of breeds already having received the care and thought of generations of skillful breeders. One man’s lifetime is too short to es- tablish a breed, and there seems small need of another. oe ey er eae, A TRIO OF PRIZE-WINNING LINCOLNS. CEPAE TER tii. CROSS-BREEDING. Notwithstanding the great excellence of many of the pure breeds of sheep it will be a long time before we will be free from the practice of cross breeding. There isa necessity for this in sheep breeding much more urgent than in cattle breed- ing, or in fact, with any other farm animals. Very few pure bred sheep reach our markets. Nor will they come in large numbers for many years. The reason for this is to be found in the fact that so large a per cent of our sheep are grown upon the western ranges. There ewe flocks seem most profitable when they have a Me- rino foundation. Merinos from time immem- orial have been range sheep, the only break in their habit being the few decades that they were kept upon eastern farms. Merinos are hardy, are used to droughts and short feed, have the in- stinect of herding, are easily managed. More- over they retain their wool well up to consider- able age. Wool is a far greater factor in West- ern sheep husbandry than it is in the country to the east. Flocks must be good shearers, must be hardy, must herd well. But the Merino when kept pure is an inferior mutton sheep. Moreover it is an inferior breed- ing sheep. An infusion of mutton blood makes the ewe a better mother, her lambs are stronger, (63) 64 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. she suckles them better. She feeds better, too, and is a ‘‘better rustler.’’ Then her progeny is in large part destined to reach the great markets when about six months of age. Therefore the better grown and heavier it is the more money it will bring. Thus there is often sought a class of rams that will make the best lambs, regard- DORSET EWES. less of their fitness for long continued life upon the range, they will not naturally remain there more than one summer. Thus the complexity of cross-breeding is increased for from the mother having in her own body an infusion of mutton blood there is secured a lamb having a sire of CROSS-BREEDING. 65 pure mutton breeding. What sort of cross makes the best ewe, what sort of cross upon her makes the best market lamb? To this question there would naturally be as many answers as there are supporters of breeds of sheep. There is hardly any commingling of bloods that has not use for some special environment. We may clear the matter up somewhat by discussing a few crosses and their results. At the outset let it be said that the influence of the sire and dam are theoretically equal. Some hidden power of the one or the other may seem to cause the offspring to resemble more nearly the one parent than the other, but no man can safely predict whether this influence will re- side in the sire or the dam. Naturally, as she nourishes the lamb, the ewe has greater chance to influence her progeny than the sire. Thus if a ewe of a small race is mated with a ram of a large race the lamb must be nourished, both be- fore and after birth, by the smaller ewe. It will erow to be of greater size than its mother, but will not equal the size of its sire. Nor will it be identically the same as though the cross was re- versed. That is, supposing we are considering the Merino of one of the lesser strains, and the Hampshire, the natural way of crossing is to use the Hampshire ram on the Merino ewe. The result is a lamb that grows to be larger than its mother, and smaller than its sire. Reversing the process, we choose a typical Merino ram and mate him to a Hampshire ewe and get a lamb that never equals its mother in stature, but excels considerably its sire, and also 66 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. excels the lamb of identically the same blood from the Merino mother. The better nourish- ment both before and after birth causes this re- sult. It is seen then that the better the ewe the better her lamb. Nevertheless, it may hap- pen that a class of moderately small ewes may yield most profit since they consume forage about in proportion to their size, thus a flock of 1,000 medium sized ewes bred to fine, strong mutton-bred rams would very likely yield a bet- ter weight of lambs than a flock of 800 larger ewes and consume practically the same amount of feed. In other words, the ram is just half of the flock, and by far the easier half to provide the forage for. Thus the ram cannot well be too good. To freshen the blood of the pure Merino on the range a number of infusions have been tried. The Cotswold blood does well; a flock having one-quarter or even one- eighth of Cotswold blood is increased in size and stamina remark- ably. To get a flock of one-quarter Cotswold blood one must first get one-half blood Cotswold- Merino rams to use on his pure-bred Merinos. For some exceedingly rich ranges the one-half blood Cotswold-Merino ewes are used and with good success. These ewes are exceedingly good foragers and raise hardy fast growing lambs. The Lineoln cross does admirably on some types of Merino ewes and is much esteemed in some regions of the West. The Oxford cross has given good results also as a permanent in- fusion in the range flock. There are a few sheep CROSS-BREEDING. 67 owners who use the Hampshire for this purpose, though the general opinion is now that the blood of the Downs cuts short the yield of wool. The Leicester blood makes an admirable infu- sion into the range flock. It is said that not more than one-quarter or one-eighth of it is needed to give strength and hardiness. The Dorset has been tried and found worthy; some of the best range ewes the writer has ever seen have been in part of Dorset blood. Dorset blood especially helps the milking qualities of Merino ewes and makes them able to push their lambs forward astonishingly. Though the writer knows of no instance of its use he is of the opinion that the use of Cheviot blood would prove a very desirable ad- dition to herds ranging in the mountains of the west. Probably one-quarter of Cheviot blood would be enough. Cheviots make flesh readily from grass alone and are remarkably hardy and are very great rustlers for feed. CROSS-BREEDING FOR THE LAMB MARKET. Considering the western range sheep first, various breeds have been used for production of market lambs. At one time the Long-wools, Cotswold, Leicester or Lincoln, were considered best for this purpose. Rams of either of these breeds will beget fine, strong lambs that will feed well and grow to large size. They will not be so fat at weaning time nor come into market so early as lambs from one of the Down breeds, but they do splendidly in the feed-lot and attain heavy weights. 68 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. The Hampshire gets splendid lambs, well marked with brown points, easily made fat and selling near the top of the market. One can hardly make a mistake in using Hampshire rams if he wishes to make market lambs. Hampshire grade lambs will usually be fat enough for the butchers when they come from the range, and if they are fed will ripen very early. They attain to large weights. The Oxford ram gets a lamb a little larger, probably, than the Hampshire, a strong, hardy fellow, that feeds well. He weighs heavy and makes good, but not so early as the other Downs. The Shropshire ram gets fine, active, growthy lambs that mature sooner than the Oxfords and sell first rate. They will usually be fat enough for the killers when they leave the range. The Southdown gets merry, plump, roly-poly lambs that are fat first of all and are apt to bring most money per pound in the market. They will not weigh quite so much as the Shropshire grades, but will be ripe earlier. The Grand Champion load of range lambs at the Interna- tional at Chicago in 1906 was a load of South- down cross-bred lambs. The western flock-mas- ter need not fear to use Southdown rams if he means to sell the lambs. They will make good and that very early. The Dorset gets lambs that weigh unusually well and the ewe lambs should always be saved to be put in the flock, since Dorset blood in the ewe flock is a gold mine to the flock owner. CROSS-BREEDING. 69 Cross-breeding on the ranges is not without its difficulties. The problem is to maintain the original ewe flock in its integrity. Cross-bred lambs that may sell for the top of the market at the river markets may be unfit for retention on the range, because of the too large proportion of mutton blood. The best plan is to breed a portion of the ewes of highest quality from the standpoint of the range man to rams especially suited to range use, and thus to maintain the flock in its required qualities, letting all of the cross bred lambs go to market. CROSS-BREEDING IN EASTERN PASTURES. There is not the same reason for cross breed- ing in eastern lands. In truth too much of that is done at all times and types are destroyed by useless combinings of bloods. If one starts out with a Shropshire flock he should endeavor to make it a better Shropshire flock by purchase of better Shropshire rams than he has been in habit of using. If he needs greater vigor and consti- tution he can get it probably quite as easily by choosing an unrelated ram bred, it may be, at a distance from him, having first rate vigor and constitution, and of the same breed. The same is true of the Cotswold, Oxford, Southdown, and other breeds. There are not enough of the pure breeds now, and they should not be mixed un- less for some special purpose, and it must be re- membered that as the cross-bred progeny should go to market the process of cross-breeding is a suicidal one. 70 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. There are occasions, however, when cross- breeding on the farm is desirable. One may buy Western ewes and ship them home. These are destined for lamb growing exclusively and no attempt will be made to maintain the flock. These ewes then may be mated with a ram suitable to the market and the time of year aimed at. If for hot-house lamb trade a South- down, Tunis, Hampshire, Shropshire or Dor- set should be used. If to lamb later and grow the lambs mainly on grass the Tunis and Dorset may be eliminated and the Cheviot and Oxford added to the list from which rams may be drawn. Or if the lambs are to come late and be fed the next Winter one of the long-wools may be chosen. Or, if the flock happens to be placed in one of those rare regions like the hills of Ohio where sheep are yet grown largely for their fleece, the Delaine or Rambouillet, or Spanish Merino ram may be used. There are regions, however, where cross breeding is imperatively demanded. That is in the early lamb breeding regions of the Virgin- ias, Tennessee and Kentucky. Here are found tvpes of native mountain sheep of a peculiar character. They may be said to be true ‘‘ Amer- ican’’ sheep, descendants of the earlier impor- tations. The unmixed native mountain sheep is leggy, thin in neck, light in fleece, having some- what of an open fleece as though coming from an open-wooled breed, and very often the ewes have horns. It may be supposed that the first colon- ists sailing as they often did from Bristol and Plymouth, in the south of England, brought with CROSS-BREEDING. Tl them the native sheep of those regions among which would be the Dorsets and various types of long-wools. These mountain ewes though not handsome to look at are better than they at first appear. ‘They are active, good feeders, very prolific, and good mothers. Their lambs are not of first rate quality unmixed, but when sired by rams of good mutton type they grow finely and sell well. The favorite sire for this business has been the Southdown, in truth no breed can get a better lamb or one ripening earlier than this old standby. Shropshires are often used, also, and get a heavier lamb. Hampshires are in great favor where tried and Dorsets have their strenuous advocates, especially in Vir- ginia, where they have been used most. The advantage of Dorset blood is two-fold, first the lambs attain very good weights, usually outweighing the progeny of Down rams, and the ewe lambs if retained on the farm, make admir- able mothers for successive generations. Lambs in these regions are usually born in March and fattened mainly on grass, going to market in June and July. The source of supply of these ewes is from the small farmers in the moun- tains. Could these men be induced to improve their flocks by use of better rams the benefit would be immediate and marked. There is no doubt that an infusion of fresh blood from any of the Down or Dorset breeds would greatly ben- efit these mountain flocks. At present they are suffering from the result of long continued in- breeding. An infusion of fresh and unrelated blood would marvelously improve them. CHAPTER IV. SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT. RESTOCKING A FARM WITH SHEEP. Supposing that we have decided to embark in the sheep industry, and have decided on a breed, the next consideration is how to set about filling the void of sheep upon our farm. Farms differ in size, conformation and soil; conditions vary greatly, so that no rule can be laid down that will be applicable to all places, yet there are a few facts that are of general application. In Eng- land and France there are farms almost entirely devoted to sheep; they carry little other stock, and grow crops mainly to be fed to the flock, with only grain in rotation. These farms are very profitable when well managed, and greatly build the soil and the for- tunes of the owners. We can not yet advocate the attempt to establish in our land such sheep farms as these, at least the growth of such a farm should be very gradual, and any attempt at to once establish such a one would result dis- astrously in nine cases out of ten. We have no class of expert shepherds such as would be needed to care for a flock on such a farm, nor (72) SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT 73 would the importation of British shepherds help us, for we have problems that they know not of, and our range of feeds is quite different from theirs. With a right understanding of the mat- ter and a gradual adaptation of our farms to sheep growing, and a habit of care once formed we can devote whole farms to sheep as well as DIPPING SHEEP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. our British cousins, but that is a work that must come with time and experience. At present, then, the farmer should start with a small flock, letting it increase gradually, and trying to grow in knowledge and experience as the fiock grows in size. Nor would it be wise or prudent to begin with a flock of pure-bred ewes. > 7} ee ee SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT. 81 ‘‘Well,’’ cautiously, ‘‘I’ll not deny that there may be a drop of other blood in him, just a drop, and not too much.’’ The writer saw the point, and curiosity led him back after the showing. He found the owner jubilant. ‘‘Did your ram win first?’’ RAMBOUILLET RAM. ‘‘Indeed he won first, and championship too.’’ ‘* And what did the judge say?’’ ‘Indeed the judge said that a Dartmoor could not be too good.’’ However, the writer does not by any means advise the ordinary breeder to attempt to help 82 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. his breed by an admixture of foreign blood. That is for the great creators with unusual in- stinct and insight and patience and persever- ance to undertake. FIXING TYPE. Sometimes one has in his flock a few individ- uals, or maybe but one, that is of unusual beauty and excellence. This may arise from a skillful combining of blood lines within the breed, or there may be born within the flock an animal different and better than any of the others. We may not be able to point the reason for this dif- ference, this betterment. It is, perhaps, a ‘‘mu- tation’’ as the newer students of breeding would say. However it came, it is such that we wish very much to fix it in the flock, to breed many like unto it. How can we accomplish this? To fix it in its entirety may indeed prove impossi- ble, if we have but one animal possessing this unusual excellence. The best that we can do is to breed it, supposing it to be a ram, to a num- ber of the most likely ewes and save the ewe lambs that come nearest the type sought. Should any of these ewe lambs show weakness of consti- tution they must be rejected, or at least ignored in this effort, and the strong ones may be bred to their own sire. The progeny of them will earry three-fourths of his blood, and will be much hke him in appearance and character. Supposing, now, there happen to be two lambs each having unusual quality, possessing this de- sired type, each sired by the same sire but by different dams. They may be bred together and SHROPSHIRE EWES ON A CANADIAN FARM. . ; tee sow . E>. OM Seyi * a, eg Enya +7 * » ¢ ©. pial At ad aia ‘ ; 2 =- ; - - f * . ’ ~ ‘ — . i ‘ + » . 4 ‘ > 1 : . »* é - a? > ’ 4 7 , * “— - « 4 - ; - a7 ~ A 4 1 A 4 _ , ’ SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT. 85 another step taken towards fixity in character. It is worth considering that in breeding a ewe to her own sire one is not inbreeding more than when he breeds together two animals born from two ewes and having a common sire. The clos- est in-breeding is when a ram is bred to a ewe having the same mother as well as the same sire. There is absolutely no other way to fix type or to get great uniformity in a flock than this system of inbreeding. It has been adopted to BLACK-FACED RAMS. a greater or less extent by all the great improv- ers of breeds. There are certain dangers inherent in a sys- tem of inbreeding. Nature permits a certain amount of it, but it is done always under the law of combat. The strongest male gets posses- sion of the females, thus nature’s weaklings, no matter what the form or fleece are weeded steadily out. Under Nature’s system the males 86 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. of all animals of the deer and sheep famiiies roam far during the breeding season and it is unlikely that incestuous breeding is. very common. The effect of incestuous breeding is not well understood and there are men who deny its dan- gers. There seems, however, to be abundant evidence that it develops an accumulation of weaknesses of constitution, it makes the progeny delicate and lessens its size and vitality. Furthermore, it often seems to lead to partial or total sterility. Not to go deeply into this debatable subject we will say that inbreeding is probably absolutely necessary in the creation of breeds and in the further development and fixing of types, but that it should be attempted only by the skilled breeder, the man sure that he has a type worth fixing. The man who is breeding for the market will find that he will do best to keep as far from in-breeding as possible. And this brings us to RENEWED VITALITY FROM FRESH BLOOD. There is something wonderfully invigorat- ing in the mingling of unrelated bloods. This has long been recognized by the advocates of eross breeding. It has indeed become a well- known saying that ‘‘cross-bred animals are most thrifty.’’ ‘‘Cross-bred lambs fatten first.”’ Among cattle breeders the truth is admitted, and swine breeders very often cross-breed for greater vigor and thrift. It is not so generally known that the bring- mg together of unrelated animals, especially of SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT. 87 the same breed if they may happen to have been grown under different environment, most usu- ally brings as much added vigor and thrift as though two distinct breeds had been brought together. There is great advantage in bring- ing vigor without losing the breed and its spec- ial character and purpose. The man, then, who finds his well-bred flock needing a renewal of life, needing a general ‘‘toning up’’ and rejuvenation should not resort to cross-breeding, supposing that he has al- ready a breed of value for his purpose, but should seek within his own breed sires as re- motely related as he can find, and possessing as much health and vigor as he ean find. He will find a marvelous result to come from this new mating with fresh blood. His old flock has in it latent excellencies that lie dormant only because the spark of life has burned dimly foratime. With the renewal of that vital spark and the greater intensity of life that results these old and almost forgotten excellencies will be in a manner revived, so that the progeny may be not merely better than the dams but better than the sire as well. The writer has seen very striking instances of this, when the ewe flock was of good inheritance and only suffering from lack of fresh blood. VITALITY THE THING TO STRIVE FOR. The sheep under domestication is not so strong as we would like to see it. In truth there is no animal under our care with less resistance than the sheep. Men do not enough consider 88 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. this. They study points, like the quality of the fleece, or the form of the head, the covering of the legs or nose, the shape of the ear, and doubt- less these are all essentials, but the first and foremost essential in a profitable flock is vigor, vitality, life. That, if it is abundant, will insure strong lambs, will insure ewes with right mother instinct and milk to serve that, will insure lambs that eat and thrive and grow and fatten and bring good prices at the market, no matter whether the ear is true to type or the wool grows on the nose or not. So, to the practical market breeder, the writer counsels, seek vigor, build constitutions, encourage health and thrift and the profits will be sure. SELECTION OF THE EWES. Pure-bred ewes may be selected much as the ram is, avoiding overgrown individuals, and seeking for uniformity of type and evidence of perfect health. In buying any sheep look well to the skin, that it be pink in color and the fleece bright and elastic, for a pale skin and sunken fleece are sure indications of lack of health and should invariably be rejected, no matter how good the blood or breeding. The grades that are to be made the body of the flock may be of Merino foundation, with excel- lent expectation of success. If these are not to be found near at home, they may often be bought of good quality at the great markets when discarded by the ranchmen. Usually ewes are sent to market because of their age and be- ginning lack of teeth so that it is not profitable SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT. 89 to retain them for more than two lamb crops on the farm. They will thrive for that time and having saved the best of their ewe lambs, there is thus laid the foundation of a useful grade flock, while the mothers may be fattened and sent back to market. While foundation ewes may be had from the markets, coming thence from the great West- ern ranges, it should not be overlooked that the native stock is generally better and to be preferred, when available. Western ewes hav- ing never been exposed to parasitic infection, are healthy, true, but when brought to Hastern farms and then exposed to these dangers, they prove less resistant than natives. The climate of the Eastern states is worse than they are accustomed to, and their breeding is apt to be uncertain. In no case should one buy ewes with perceptible Mexican blood in them, as these sheep readily revert to a very fixed and stubborn type, useful on the desert, but too primitive for good farm sheep husbandry. It is unwise to select ewes shearing too heavy fleeces. A moderately heavy fleece betokens the stronger sheep with greater feeding capac- ity. Select that sort. Choose the short-legged ewes, with good backs, and as thick as you can find them. The best time of the year to stock a farm with sheep is in the early fall. Getting the ewes home then, you have time to make their ac- quaintance while work is not crowding on the farm. Then you can see to the mating, and dur- ing the first. winter things will go as you plan, 90 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. and you are certain of one good lamb crop. Your troubles will not begin for six or eight months. They need not begin at all if you will observe carefully some rules for avoidance of parasites, to be laid down later. GETTING HOME WITH THE FLOCK. The writer remembers with delight the day when he drove to Woodland Farm his first flock of ewes. It was a fine sunny day in November. The sheep were well selected and round and plump, all young ewes. They traveled willingly along the country road through a quiet neigh- borhood where great oaks overarched the way and stopping now and then to browse the green grass among the purpling wild asters. The writer was but a boy then, newly wed- ded filled with high hopes and dreaming brave dreams of the future. The young wife met him and together they drove home the little flock! Happy beginning it proved to be, though many lessons remained to be learned and many dis- couragements to be fought through, yet the coming of the flock meant the beginning of the upbuilding of the old farm and of the for- tunes of its owners. IMPORTANCE OF DIPPING. When the flock comes home the first duty is to give it a thorough dipping. There are two reasons for this: the one that there may be ticks upon the sheep; the other because of danger from scab germs. Any sheep shipped by rail SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT 91 or penned in stock yards or railway stock pens is liable to be infected with scab germs. One or two scab insects on a sheep may multiply until the entire flock is seabby in a few months and entail great suffering upon the sheep and loss upon the owner. Prevention is easy and cheap, though cure after the disease has prog- ressed far is harder. Another reason for dip- ping is the sheep tick. This is a common pest upon farms and greatly interferes with the thrift of sheep, while it is entirely preventable, and in truth upon the farm of the writer with a thousand sheep there are years when not a single tick is to be found. Sheep ticks so far as we know inhabit no’ other animals and once rid of them you will remain rid of them unless you buy infested sheep or carry ticks upon your own clothing or they are brought by shearers. It is very easy and inexpensive entirely to rid a flock of ticks and as easy to prevent the attack of scab. THE SCAB GERM This is a minute form of parasitic insect too small. to be easily discovered with the naked eye, which by burrowing in the skin, or, rather, by irritating the skin and causing it to form a erust by its own exudations beneath which it burrows, greatly afflicts the sheep, causing loss of wool, intense itching, loss of flesh, and in the end frequently brings death from the result of the distress and emaciation conse- quent upon its disturpance. The scab germ multiplies with fearful rapid- 92 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. ity, each female laying in two or three days 15 eggs, of which ten will hatch females and five males. These eggs hatch and soon mature in- sects begin laying eggs. Gerlach, the German authority, says that in 15 days one female will become the mother of 15, after 30 days of 150, after 45 days of 1,500, after 60 days of 15,000. Up to this time there has not been much seen of the result of the disease, but here begins the wholesale onslaught of the legion upon their hosts, for in 75 days there are 150,000, and in 90 days 1,500,000! Now let them alone for a little longer and the result is sufficiently ter- rifying. The symptoms of scab are first the uneasi- ness of the sheep, which reaches around to the affected part (that is apt to be ou the shoulder, neck or side, though it may appear in almost any part, but wherever it appears it causes in- tense itching) and bites at the wool or paws with its foot trying to scratch the spot. If now you will carefully examine the animal you will find under the wool at this spot of infection the skin whitened and perhaps exuding a watery secretion. One can not with the naked eye see the scab insects at work. A little later this spot if untreated becomes a veritable scab and the adjacent regions are attacked. It rapidly spreads throughout the flock, the affected sheep rubbing against posts and racks, dislodging mites that fasten in turn upon other sheep. To cure scab thorough dipping is necessary. To prevent it all sheep should be well dipped after every railway Journey or exposure in in- SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT. 93 fected yards or pens. Dipping for prevention is cheap and easy. Dipping for cure is not so much harder. The main thing is to dip, and dip thoroughly. THE DIPPING VAT. This should be a simple trough of wood or metal or concrete, 16 inches wide, 4 feet deep and as long as one wishes to build. The shorter the vat the slower the process of dipping, as the sheep when scabby must soak for two minutes. For a farm vat a length of 10 or 12 feet will be ample, as time can be allowed them thoroughly to soak. The vat must be narrow so that the sheep can not turn around in it. It must be deep so that each sheep can be plunged clear in all over so that no spot will remain untreated. It is not necessary to lower the sheep into the vat or to raise them out again; they may as well be thrown in or made to jump in at one end, and that end of the vat should go down perpendicularly; at the other end there must be a gradual incline up which they can walk. For a small flock the bottom level of the vat need not be more than four feet long, with an incline beginning there and running gradually out to the level and to a draining platform from which the drip should be collected and dis- charged into the vat again. A width at the bot- tom of 6 inches is ample, as only the feet go clear down and the less width the less liquor is required to charge the vat. In case there is genuine and serious affection of scab, the sheep should be held rigidly in for two minutes, and 94 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. in that time the head should be immersed briefly twice. If there is only suspected infection, how- ever, and not yet any outbreak, the sheep may be run through as rapidly as convenient, being only sure that each one is completely immersed in the lhquor, for they will remain wet for 24 hours at least after emerging from the dip. In a practice of many years the writer has never had scab break out in a flock thoroughly dipped once by simply running the sheep through. There are other essential conditions to be ob- served however, which will be mentioned now. The dip should be hot. This does not mean warm, nor boiling, but as hot as the operator ean endure to plunge in his bare arm. It is better to test the temperature in this manner than by use of a thermometer. If the latter is used a temperature of 110 deg. Fahrenheit will be about right, but the bare skin is the best thermometer. The water used must be softened or ‘‘broke.’’ To do this use ordinary concentrated lye, enough to make the water a little biting and give it an oily feel like soap. This is an inexpensive process. ‘The dip, whatever it is, must be used of good strength. There are various good preparations in use, most of which are effective if used of sufficient strength. On the farm of the writer the coal tar prep- arations are used almost always, because they prove effective and cheap, and are pleasant to operate with. They are healing to the skin and SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT. 95 effectually dissipate any tendency to eye dis- ease and are sure death to all forms of insect life whatever. These coal tar dips are given various names as ‘‘Zenoleum,’’ ‘‘ Naptholeum,”’’ ‘*Daytholeum,’’ ete., and are similar in ecompo- sition and effect. The directions often say to use them at a strength of 1.to 100, that is of one part of dip to 100 parts of water; this is not safe in combating scab, and as the cost of dipping is mostly in labor, the writer always uses them at a strength of one to forty, and has had no failure to cure every sort of para- sitism and has never injured a sheep by its use. In truth, one winter when seab broke out among some undipped sheep (that had been dipped in Chicago, but imperfectly) and the farm flock became infected, we dipped all in the middle of winter, turning back to the old quar- ters, and cured each case effectually, so that there has never been a reappearance of the dis- ease upon the farm. The dipping was repeated in ten days to give chance for eggs to hatch. This dipping so thoroughly also eradicates ticks which is no small matter. REGULAR DIPPING OF THE FARM FLOCK. While new sheep added to the flock should be dipped whenever they arrive, barring ex- ceedingly cold weather the regular flock needs its annual bath, and this should be given imme- diately after shearing, when ewes and lambs may all be dipped at a nominal cost. It takes nearly a gallon of liquid to dip a yearling of 96 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. medium size with its fleece on, but to dip a shorn sheep takes not more than a quart, and the little lamb a small amount. This annual cleaning up prevents ticks getting foothold and heads off a lot of other troubles, such as sore eyes and mouths, canker of teats, and sheep lice. It is not a troublesome operation to dip a flock of sheep. The water should be conveni- ently at hand and some means of heating it. An open kettle of 30 to 40 gallons capacity will serve if nothing else is convenient; red hot irons may be thrown into the tank to heat what is left from a previous dipping; there should be a large pen to hold the sheep and a small one close to the tank for a catching pen. Just at the end of the tank there may be an incline about 3 feet long covered with smooth sheet metal, and this may be greased so that when a sheep steps on it or is lifted upon it, it will easily slide down into the plunge. A force of five men, two of whom keep the dip mixed and replenished, and three of whom put in and take out sheep, will readily dip 100 in an hour, though if they have their fleeces on they should drain for a longer time than would make this practicable. It is not often necessary to as- sist the sheep to climb out, but there should be one man ready and watching with care to see that all are fully submerged and none stay in too long. The writer has never seen pregnant ewes, handled with care in the dipping vat, abort their lambs, and has frequently dipped 500 without killing or injuring one. The cheapest tank is made of galvanized iron. SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT. 97 The best is made of concrete, which will endure forever if rightly made. SUMMARY OF DIPPING. Dip every sheep when it comes to the farm as soon as it is rested, especially with care when it may have come by rail. When seab infection is suspected, but none is visible, dip once by simple and complete immer- sion in a dip hot and strong enough. When seab is already in evidence let the af- fected sheep soak in the dip for two minutes, first having rubbed and loosened up the scabs. After ten days dip again; always turn freshly dipped sheep into their sheds so that they may rub their wet fleeces against the wood work and disinfect that. Dip the whole flock every spring if there are ticks, immediately after shearing, being sure that no sheep or lamb escapes. After the flock is clean it will remain clean if newly bought sheep are dipped before being added to it. There is no necessity to dip a clean flock. At shearing time should the owner shear his own sheep and there be but two or three ticks to each animal he should eut them in two with the shears and dip the lambs. There is no more need of having ticks on a sheep farm than there is of wolves. FALL TREATMENT OF THE EWE FLOCK. The ewes being brought presumably to new and fresh pastures and rid of their vermin 98 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. thrive admirably. If grass is not abundant they ought to have a little extra feed at times as it is Nature’s way to then make them gain. A feld of rape in which they may run, alternat- ing at their pleasure with grass, makes them improve rapidly. Pumpkins fed on grass, seeds and all, are excellent for the ewes. Not only are the pumpkins good feed, but their seeds, besides being nourishing, have in them great medicinal virtues. Pumpkin seeds are efficient vermifuges. One of the best treatments for tape worm in the human subject is the infusion of pumpkin seeds. Worms destroy more sheep than dogs do, and it must be the constant study of the shepherd to avoid them. The reason for desiring the flock to thrive at this time is that it is near the mating season, and if the sheep are in fine, thrifty condition, the ewes will the more rapidly conceive and drop a greater number of twins. Yet another reason is that a sheep which starts into winter in good thrift comes through much stronger with less feed than one that starts in in poor flesh. A handful of grain fed in October or No- vember is worth a peck of feed to a thin ewe in January not that the flock should be neg- lected later on, but it is essential that sheep should enter winter well fortified and strong. ' MATING. Before the mating begins one should care- fully go over his flock and assort the ewes. SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT. 99 Ewe lambs must be taken out and none bred that are not past a year old. Old ewes that have lost their teeth and are evidently not quite able to go safely through the winter and nourish well their lambs, are better consigned to the fat- tening pen. At least there should be a mark put upon them that will indicate their condition, so that they may be given extra care and atten- tion. Quite often with such ewes it is most profitable to breed them and by careful feeding keep them as strong as you dare till lambing time, alter this to give them a large allowance of grain, ground if need be, so as to push them with their lambs, and they will often make as good lambs as the cther ewes and be themselves ready to follow their offspring to market a few weeks after the lambs have left them. A suit- able mark for these culled ewes is to clip off the end of one ear. Yet another thing for which to search, is a spoiled udder or a ewe without perfect teats. (uite often such ewes are found, and to have them drop lambs without ability to suckle them is to entail great disappointment and trouble on the shepherd. There is a temptation to breed the young, immature ewes, particularly if they are well grown, but it is wiser not to do this, as it leads to the steady decrease in size of your sheep, and by weakening the ewe’s constitution be- eause of the heavy drain upon her, you make her the more lable to attacks of parasites, 100 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. those foes of the sheep and shepherd that never ean be forgotten with safety. PUTTING IN THE RAM. The ewe carries her lamb from 142 to 150 days, or, roughly, five months. It is well to so time the putting in of the ram as to bring the lambs at the season when they will best fit in with your scheme of management. Much de- pends here upon the breed under consideration, for it is natural for the Dorset and the Merino to drop their lambs very early, so that they may be mated with the ram in September, when the lambs will come early in February, or if bred in August they will come in January, or in July to have them in December. With Shropshires it is unusual for lambs to appear so early as December or January, though the middle of September is an excellent time to mate them; with Southdowns the same time will serve, though they naturally lamb later, and with Cotswolds and Lincolns it is unusual for lambs to be born before March or April. If the shep- herd has good quarters for his flock he may as well try for some early lambs; they will serve to occupy his time in winter, and coming then when he has leisure, he will lose but a small proportion of them. Winter lambs well nour- ished in infancy make much stronger and better sheep than late lambs, as they go on to grass so big and lusty as to defy many of the evils that attack later lambs. MANAGEMENT OF THE RAM. The ram during the summer days should have SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT. 101 the run of a small lot with access to shade, with abundant food, yet not too much, and with com- pany of other rams or of a few wethers, or some ram lambs or even with a few ewes running with him. He should have careful attention that he remains in perfect health, especial care being taken not to put him on a piece of infected grass where he may develop parasites. Before the breeding season he should be entirely separated from the ewes, and if not in strong condition, given a regular feed of oats and bran or some similar feed twice a day, not enough to fatten him, but. to put him in vigorous condition. It is wise not to ever turn him with the ewes, but better to bring them to him each morning early while it is yet cool, penning them in a small pen so that there is Just room enough for him to move about readily among them, and where they can not easily escape you when you desire to eatch some of them. After the ewes are brought up, let him come in with them, and he will soon single out one that may be in heat. Allow him to serve her once only and immediately put her out, mark- ing her at the same time so that you will know that she has been bred. It is wise to use a dif- ferent color in marking each week, thus all the ewes that are bred the first week will be marked red, all the next week blue, the third week yel- low; the fourth week black, the fifth week green and so on. This marking is done with a brush anda daub of paint, on the back of the head or on the shoulder is a good place. After the first ewe has been taken out, the 102 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. ram will proceed quietly to search for another. Unless he is a very vigorous ram, it is unwise to allow him to serve more than four during a morning, and if a large number seem to be in heat, it will be well to get them up again after sunset in the evening. The ram has an exceed- ingly vigorous reproductive system, and has power to impregnate more females than most animals, even though his work is confined to a short period each year. The ewes that are served and put out should be put by themselves and not returned to the flock for three days, else they may be still in heat and receive unnecessary attention from the male. One service will as surely impregnate as more and will beget stronger lambs. Managed in this way a ram will easily care for 40 or 50 ewes and many serve 100 if he is unusually strong and vigorous and well cared for. He should be kept quiet all day, in a cool place, and well fed on stimulating food such as oats and bran with clover hay. One advantage from this way of managing ewes is that one will know those that do not take the ram at all and can put them out of the flock, and by giving them a little extra feed, they will soon fatten, when they may be sold. There is a practice not very common among shepherds of forcibly holding ewes that per- sistently reject the ram, and allowing him to serve them. They will not often conceive from this service, but it occasionally causes them to come in heat naturally in from ten days to three weeks. Some early lamb breeders make consid- SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT. 103 erable use of this practice. It can do the ewe no harm in ease it is unsuccessful. CARE OF THE PREGNANT EWE. Perhaps the greatest stumbling block in the way of the inexperienced shepherd is in the care of his ewe flock during pregnancy. Hither he feeds them too well, or on unsuitable foods, or he deprives them of air and exercise, or he goes to the other extreme and lets them brave the storms without enough food. Hither condi- tion will surely be fatal to his fortune, though of the two extremes the worse is that of too much food and no exercise. Such a course is surely fatal to his hopes of a large crop of strong lambs. If one would have success with these preg- nant ewes he should consider their condition in a state of nature. Then they roamed the hills, selecting the higher points as places to sleep; they sheltered beside rocks or under pines. They were not in large flocks and found suf- ficient food as they were not restrained by fences. They had abundant exercise and al- ways fresh air. Doubtless when their lambs came they were very strong and vigorous, able soon to run beside their mothers. Under ranch conditions today lambs are born very strong, and it is rare to find one so weak as to be un- able to suck without aid. The writer remembers vividly his first experi- ence with lambing ewes. The first winter he let them have the run of a pasture, with shel- 104 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. ter, fed clover and corn stover, and the result was a good lamb crop. A few of these lambs were so remarkably promising, one selling for 418 at weaning time, that he was encouraged to attempt to do much better the next year. That winter proved to be quite cold and stormy so he kept them rather close. Having learned the value of wheat bran as a bone and muscle build- er, he fed these ewes about all the bran they wanted, and they consumed a great deal, with clover hay. The lamb crop came early, and the lambs were strong, being the product of hand coupling with a vigorous sire. The difficulty was in the enormous size of many of them, some being so large of bone that it was nearly impossible for them to be delivered at all. One Shropshire weighed 17 pounds at birth! Its mother died socn after its delivery, and the lamb itself was lost through unskillful feeding. The net result was a small crop of magnificent lambs secured at a cost of great labor and pains. The next year an old friend and shepherd counseled him to adopt a radically different pol- icy. This was to allow the flock to run in the pas- ture, sheltering in open sheds and under the trees, and subsisting solely on coarse forage such as corn stover and oat straw. Having in the barns a great number of lambs that were being fed for fattening, there was some excuse for neglecting the ewes. Unfortunately ewes in winter time because of their long fleeces, appear to be in good con- dition when they are not, and the writer had SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT 105 no idea how very thin in flesh they were becom- ing until lambs started to drop in April. Then his troubles began. The lambs came strong enough, as a rule, nor were they too large to be delivered easily but the ewes having been poorly nourished, had no milk for them, and would not own them at all. The truth is that there is a direct connection between the milk glands of an animal and the part of the brain where les love of offspring, and in the sheep at least it is rare to find mother love where there is no milk to go along with it. The result was that the writer was put to his wits’ end to make the ewes own their lambs and to try by good feeding to bring them to their milk flow. Many lambs were lost, and the whole result was disheartening. The simple truth is that pregnant ewes must have so far as possible natural conditions. They must have enough food, and that of a suitable nature properly to nourish the growing foetus without stimulating too much the development of bone. They must come to lambing in good heart, what the farmer would eall ‘‘fat,’’ but not according to the butcher’s standard. They must have abundant opportunity to exercise and to get fresh air. Thus treated their lambs should come as strong as wild things and give little trouble. It is the natural thing for a lamb to be born strong, to live at birth, since all its ancestors have done the like since lambs were born into the world. There is danger in well bred ewes highly fed upon such foods as wheat bran and clover or 106 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. alfalfa hay that the lambs may have excessive bony development, and it is not now the prac- tice of the writer to feed much bran before wean- ing, but to give instead bright, sweet corn stover and alfalfa hay. Too much alfalfa hay alone will sometimes make the lambs rather large at birth. If the coarse forage is not abundant and of ex- cellent quality, the shepherd should feed a small daily allowance of grain. A mixture of corn and oats may be used, which should be fed in wide flat-bottomed troughs, so that the ewes ean not rapidly swallow it as they will when fed in V-shaped troughs. A run to a blue-grass pasture is an excellent thing and if the grass is permitted to grow up in the fall and lie uneaten, no small part of the sustenance of the flock will come from that. A sheltering bit of woodland, in which they may wander, affords shelter and amusement, and well repays the ground on which it stands. While the flock should be out of doors every fine winter’s day, yet the shepherd should have his charges in mind and see that each ewe comes to the barn before storms break, and always the flock should be shut in at night. Yet unless the weather is very severe they should have much fresh air in their night quarters—a large opening on the leeward side is the best pro- vision. yo OU eae i ey CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. THE EWE BARN. A breeding ewe requires about 12 square feet of floor surface. There should be provided in the ewe barn movable feed racks, long and nar- row, of such type that they will form partitions wherever needed. These racks are best made 24 inches wide, 36 inches high, with a tight bot- tom about 6 inches up from the ground. The sides about this bottom may be of 6 inch boards, forming a shallow feed box. On this founda- tion will be nailed, vertically, slats 14 inch thick, 4 inches wide and 30 inches long. These slats may be placed 7 inches apart, so that the sheep ean thrust their heads clear into the rack to feed. There will then be much less loss of feed than if the slats are placed close together, for in that case the ewes pull all the hay through the cracks and drop most of it under their feet. There will be a little dust get into the wool of the necks in feeding in such a rack, but it is a trifling dam- age compared with the loss of forage in any ‘‘feed-saving’’ rack. (107) 108 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. After using many forms of racks, the writer now uses these in preference to any others, for in them may be fed grain, bran, silage or any sort of hay. The ewe barn must have provision for most ample ventilation. That is best accomplished by having on two sides clear across the barn SOUTHDOWN EWES a system of doors so arranged that they are divided in halves horizontally, the lower part of the door swinging as an ordinary gate swings, the upper half hinged at its upper edge and hfting up to a horizontal position, upheld by wooden props or pendant chains. By means of these upper doors the ventilation CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 109 may be made so thorough that the air will be practically as good within the barn as outside, or in colder weather one side may be completely closed and the other, to leeward, opened or in very cold weather all may be closed tight. It will be disastrous to confine the sheep in a poorly ventilated building. Loss of thrift, colds and catarrh will surely result. In England sheep are almost never confined to buildings at all. Their usual mild winters make outdoor feeding practicable with them, whereas it is not so with us. We must feed in racks dur- ing the time that they are hurdling off turnips in winter and much of the loss of thrift and char- acter of English sheep bred here is owing to unskillful wintering in poorly ventilated barns. During the winter season the shepherd has op- portunity to get well acquainted with his flock. He should learn to know each ewe by her counte- nance; and she should learn to know him and to know so little of evil of him that he can ap- proach any one and eatch her without difficulty and without frightening her. A _ shepherd’s erook that will catch by the hind leg is useful in the sheep fold, though I prefer for ordinary use the old-fashioned crook that catches by the neck. Any blacksmith can make in a few moments a erook of an old horse-rake tooth, set in a long wooden handle. It should be so shaped that it will with a little pressure slip over the neck of the ewe, widening at the opening considerably to make it easy of use, and the end should be turned over in a little coil so that it ean not accidentally wound the skin. 110 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. Before the lambs are due it is well to turn each ewe up on her rump, using her gently, and with shears clip the wool away from the udder; par- ticularly the little locks that might be seized by the lamb when searching for the teat. Before the lambing season the shepherd should provide himself with some little panels, made of light wood, like doors, each panel 36” high and 48” long. Two of these panels should be hinged together at the ends so that they may be folded together and laid away or opened in the shape of the letter L. The use of these is to make little pens in which to place ewes about to lamb, or newly lambed, to prevent their lambs straying away and getting mixed through the flock. Thus many lambs will be saved that otherwise would be lost and much of the usual vexatious work of the shepherd avoided. ‘To use these panels, one is opened at right angles in the corner of the lambing room and by aid of hooks fastened at the free ends to the wall thus making a pen 4x4’. As it is tight, the lamb ean not creep out, and the ewe being unable to see out is made more tranquil. When there is need of another such pen it is set up alongside the first one and thus on until a row has been erect- ed across the end of the building. If there be need, another row can join these. The observant shepherd can usually foretell the advent of a lamb, for the ewe shows by her appearance and her actions that she 1s expecting it. Because of her instinct, indeed it is not un- usual to see a ewe hunting anxiously about for her lamb before it has been born at all! It is DELAINE MERINO RAM LAMBS. CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 113 wise to place her by herself before this event oc- curs, if it conveniently can be done. CARE AT LAMBING TIME. There should be small difficulty in the ewe de- livering her lamb if she has been rightly fed and treated. There will probably be no occasion for interference of the shepherd, yet he should be watchful, and when she has been in distress for some time without effect he should not hesitate to go to her assistance. The difficulty may be one of wrong presentation. Naturally the lamb comes with front feet first, and nose just be- tween them. Even when the presentation is right the shepherd may be of great help some- times, if the lamb is of large size, by gently man- ipulating the parts, pulling a little at the lamb and pushing the external parts of the ewe back until the head is free. Then the nose may be wiped so that the lamb can breathe and in a mo- ment, after the ewe has again begun her labor, youmay gently draw the lamb outward until the shoulders are delivered—the hardest part. I usually leave her then, for the hips and hind legs come away readily, and the ewe generally gets up at once and seeks her lamb and proceeds to lick it and caress it with her tongue. It should soon try to stand and in about 15 minutes will try to suck. If it finds the teat without aid you~ may call it half raised. Usually it is well to help the lamb to its first meal, especially if the ewe is young, and it is her first born. The easiest way to do this is to gently set her on her rump, as though you were going 114 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. to shear her, kneeling down behind her and with her shoulders resting against you. First start the milk from her teats, then taking the lamb with the right hand (the left arm being under the ewe to support her), lay it down on its side and opening its mouth insert the teat, when it will usually begin to suck immediately. Let it get a pretty fair belly full and its chances are bright for coming on in good, strong fashion. The shepherd should observe whether it aft- erward goes to sucking on its own account, and if it does there need not be many slips between that lamb and a ten dollar bill, if it is born right! Supposing there is a wrong presentation. The shepherd is fortunate if he has a small hand, for it is his duty to help put things right. We ean not here give details of how this is to be done, but knowing the natural presentation the shepherd should be able to study it out for him- self. He must carefully grease his hand with lard or vaseline and avoid so far as possible any rough treatment or injury to the delicate parts. The writer has taken several lambs away with hind feet first without difficulty, but should the head be turned back it must be straightened be- fore delivery is possible. There will be much more difficulty with young ewes than with older ones, so that the imex- perienced shepherd is wise if he begins with ewes most of which have lambed once or twice before they came to his care. In very cold weather the lambing barn should be made as comfortable as possible, without de- priving it altogether of fresh air, and even then CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 115 when twin lambs are born there may be need of assistance or one of them may perish before it is made dry and given milk to supply inward heat. It is an excellent plan to have at hand a tub or half barrel; a salt barrel sawed in two serves well and in this have a jug of hot water. The lainb may be laid in this tub and it covered with a blanket until its mother can give it her attention. Or a chilled lamb, if only slightly chilled, may be warmed in this manner. An excellent plan and simpler if the shepherd is at hand when the first of twins is born is to lay it in a tub on two or three inches of wheat. bran and cover it all but the nose with more bran. It will keep as warm as toast there and the bran will help ab- sorb moisture. Then when it is given to the ewe she will lick off the adhering bran without. in- jury to herself. Supposing that through some accident. the new-born lamb has gotten thoroughly chilled; the best manner of warming it is by immersion in water as hot as one can bear his hand in. This will soon become cooled and more hot water should be added, taking care of course not to scald the lamb. When warm and re- vived it should be wiped dry and taken to its mother and held till it is supplied with her milk. The writer has revived in this manner lambs seemingly dead. It is not wise to give it cow’s milk if it can be avoided and if it is necessarv the cow’s milk should be diluted with some quite warm water. Some shepherds give a drop or two of whiskey to a chilled lamb and it may sometimes prove beneficial. 116 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. The next day after the lamb is born the ewe should be milked clean. The shepherd should then observe whether the lamb is taking her milk all right, and if there is much surplus he should milk it out every day clean until such time as the lamb can use it. This is especially _ necessary with Dorset ewes and some other breeds occasionally need attention. It is not well for the lamb to take in the milk first se- creted after being retained stagnant in the dam’s udder for an undue length of time. Such large milking ewes while troublesome raise the finest and most profitable lambs in the end. Occasionally a young ewe will not own her lamb or an older ewe may neglect or disown hers. Generally, if the lamb is put with her in a small pen and helped to get its rations for a few times she will own it. If she persists in her neglect she may have her head fastened into a pair of small stanchions so that she ean eat but not get away from the lamb nor attack it, nor readily prevent its sucking. These stanchions may be made of two pieces of 1x4 pine driven into the earthen floor, and the tops held together by a short board nailed on. There is no cruelty about this practice and it is gener- ally effective when persisted in for a few days. Occasionally there will be a ewe whose lamb will die and leave her with an udder filled with milk. This gives opportunity to change to her some twin lamb whose mother would be better for the relief. To accomplish this transference the best plan is to remove the skin of the dead lamb soon after its death and slip it over the CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 117 living lamb. It may be pulled off as a stocking is removed and rubbed with a little salt to dry it and at once slipped on to the twin lamb with the feet thrust through the holes where the former lamb’s legs were. Introduced now to the mother of the dead lamb, confined with her in a small pen, it is not often that she will refuse to own it at once. Hwes know their lambs en- A BUNCH OF NEBRASKA LEICESTERS. tirely by scent, and thus the odor of the skin tells her that it is truly her own lamb that is with her. This skin may be taken off after a few days. It is not good shepherding to permit a ewe to be without a lamb sucking her when there are lambs enough to go around, and usually there will be so many twins among ewes of the mut- 118 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. ton breeds that there are enough lambs for all and perhaps 25 to the hundred over. Occasionally a ewe will be found of so per- verse a disposition or so undeveloped in udder or malformed that she will not raise a lamb at all. The cure for her is to cut off half of one ear, which is the ‘‘ brand of Cain,’’ and indicates that she is to go to the butcher as soon as fat. There is a man in the West who sells for one dollar a receipt for making ewes own lambs, either their own or some others. Having paid my dollar I can testify that there is merit in his plan, which is to carefully wash the lamb, es- pecially about the rump and tail and on top of the head, removing.thus all trace of scent so far as possible. Next you are to catch the ewe and milk upon the head and rump of the lamb from her udder, rubbing it well over him, and lastly to put a handful of milk on her own nose and in her mouth. Then hold the lamb to her side and when it is sucking permit her to smell of it. Often this will succeed, but if she has lambed some days previously the recourse to stanchions will be surer and less troublesome. FEEDING OF THE EWE AFTER LAMBING. If the ewe has been well nourished during her pregnancy she comes in with her lamb strong and has a well filled udder. At once when the lamb is born she must be turned away from the flock, and if the shepherd will give her the trifle of care that she really needs then, he will keep her by herself or in a pen with other ewes in her condition for a few days. During this time CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 119 she should be somewhat sparingly fed with grain, or it may even be best to give her none at all, depending upon her condition. It is unwise to early force her to a milk flow in excess of what the lamb can consume. In a few days, however, she will need good food in generous amounts for the lamb will draw heavily upon her system for nourishment. She can not keep up her milk flow by eating alone if she is a large milker, but will decline somewhat in condition, even when well fed, showing that her flesh also turns to milk. Bear always in mind two facts. Sheep are ruminating animals, accustomed by nature to eating bulky foods of moderate nutritive prop- erties, and not accustomed to eating grain. Next, sheep have delicate digestions, easily dis- turbed by improper feeding, excessive feeding or sudden changes in the amount of feed given. Therefore make no sudden changes and least of all make at once a large addition of grain to her daily ration. In England ewes seldom taste grain at all, but eat instead grass, hay and roots, mainly swede turnips. Here, where roots are not so easily grown and fed (excepting in Canada and northern America), more reliance is put upon grain and with care in feeding it may take the place very well. A sensible treatment of the ewe that lambs in winter is to keep her mostly on clover or alfalfa hay until after her lamb comes. There will be no need to limit the amount of hay that she con- sumes after lambing and then when her lamb takes all her milk and wishes more, begin feed- 120 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. ing her a little wheat bran. For a week bran will suffice, gradually increasing the amount fed, then there may be added to it a little chop- ped corn or barley and a little later some oil- meal. A pound a day of this mixture will keep her in good milk flow and it must be gradually led up to for about ten days. About the right proportions of this mixture are 100 Ibs. of wheat bran, 100 Ibs. of chopped corn and 20) Ibs. of oilmeal. This with clover or alfalfa hay will push her to a very heavy milk flow. If she is a large ewe she may consume more than a pound to advantage, as much as two pounds being consumed by some large Dor- set ewes belonging to the writer. If this feed is so gradually introduced to the ewe that her digestion is not disturbed nor her milk flow stimulated too much at first, there is small danger of overfeeding her, supposing that the lamb is to be pushed for early market. Her unselfish nature turns the feed quickly into milk and little of it goes to nourish her own body. It is much easier, however, ‘to keep her in large milk flow if we provide succulent food at this time. Corn silage is easily provided and is as good for the ewe as for the cow. It should be made from well matured corn so as to de- velop its sugar and prevent an excess of acid from forming. Some complaint has been made of the effect of corn silage upon sheep, but usu- ally the trouble has been that the feeders have tried to make it the main part of the ration. It should always be fed in connection with good sound dry hay and some grain. As corn silage CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 121 from well matured corn has in it a good deal of grain when it is fed, the rest of the ration should be of wheat bran, oilmeal and clover or alfalfa hay. In the northern part of the United States, along the great lakes, in Michigan, Wisconsin and northern Minnesota beside northern New York and New England and in all of Canada (besides Oregon, Washington and British Co- lumbia) roots form a very important part of the ewe’s ration. Roots have, indeed, almost cre- ated the Hnglish breeds of mutton sheep. They are safer to feed than silage and better. In England it is customary to grow turnips, mostly swedes, which are seldom pulled but are con- sumed on the ground on which they grow, being enclosed by hurdles and eaten off a block at a time. In very wet or bad weather some are pulled and carried to the sheep being fed on grass or in open sheds. The use of roots is productive of great good to the ewe flock. They are succulent and start a natural milk flow, whereas grain naturally goes more to producing flesh and fat. There is no danger of the ewes consuming too many roots. They push her easily and naturally to a strong flow of milk that has very healthful properties. Ewes highly fed on grain often give milk that is injurious to their lambs. Of this there is no danger when roots are substi- tuted in large part for the grain. The shepherd who ean readily grow roots has a distinct advantage over the one who relies upon dry hay and grain for wintering his ewe 12 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. flock. Most of the best developed sheep, the ones seen at our fall shows, come from root- growing regions. Unfortunately roots are not very easily grown in the corn-belt and below, though mangels will thrive well to the south- ward. Swede turnips form the bulk of the roots grown for sheep. They should be sown on pro- ductive soil, well prepared. The time of sow- ing varies with climates but usually early in July the seed should go into the ground. It 1s. well to have the land ridged nicely and to sow the seed on the top of the ridge, which makes much easier hoeing and thinning or ‘‘singling.”’ In dry climates of course ridging must be at- tempted with caution not to get them too sharp and tall. Mangels are more productive than swedes but are not so rich and are unsafe to feed to rams. Carrots are more trouble to grow than either but are the best when grown. Many distressing troubles come from sud- den increase in the grain ration of the ewe after lambing. It is a very inducing cause of garget, or it may stop the milk flow altogether, or it may cause founder, stiffness of joints and great lameness. TROUBLES OF YOUNG LAMBHOOD. The lamb has his trials and dangers too. Supposing that he gets accidentally shut away from his mother for some hours, until he is very empty and she very full of milk, if then he gets sudden access to her he will usually die from the overburden of milk taken in. When the CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 123 shepherd discovers that ewe and lamb have been separated for several hours he should catch the ewe and milk her nearly clean before allowing them to come together. Then there are contagious sore eyes. These are caused by a germ. There are probably sev- eral kinds of germs that do the mischief, and the result.is an inflammation and weeping of the eye with consequent distress and lack of thrift. The cure is fortunately easy. Taking some one of the coal tar dips, and diluting with water nearly as much as for killing scab, the head should be well wet and care taken that some of the fluid actually reaches the eye. It may be painful for a moment but it works a speedy eure. The writer has repeatedly cured this trouble by dropping a tiny drop of the pure dip, undiluted, into the open eye of the lamb. Tears start vigorously and dissolve it while the eye- hd winking vigorously carries it to every part. The cheeks shouid be saturated also with dip, properly diluted. SORE MOUTH AND TEATS. Quite often a contagious form of sore mouth affects young lambs and the sores are seen also upon the teats and udders of the ewes. These sores form scabs along the edges of the lips and pustules upon the teats. Often they become so troublesome as to cause the death of the lamb, more usually simply interfering with its thrift so much as to sometimes make it profitless. The writer has found this disease, which sheep writ- ers usually spend so much time in describing 124 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. and discussing, of the easiest possible control. Assuming that it is of germ origin, to rub off the scabs and wash the lips with strong solu- tions of coal tar dips and to treat the udders in the same manner has with the author in every ease served to effect a radical cure. Quite often this disease breaks out upon the mouths of Western range lambs upon their arrival at an Kastern farm for feeding. The treatment is to rub off the scabs and apply the undiluted dip to the fresh surface. In recommending these coal tar products the writer wishes to be under- stood as meaning such preparations as are usually sold as ‘‘Zenoleum,’’ ‘‘Naptholeum,’’ ‘*Milk Oil,’’ ete. They are much alike, really impure coal tar creosote, and most effectual destroyers of germ life and when used with dis- cretion are among the best friends of the shep- herd. FEEDING THE LAMBS. Lambs early develop a hunger for solid food and begin nibbling at hay and sampling ground feed or whatever is at hand. At the age of ten days they will begin seriously to eat ground feed. Advantage of this should be taken and the lamb encouraged to eat as early and as much as possible. During the early life of an animal nutrition is more perfect than later and the cost of producing growth is much less. Digestion is more perfect, the young animal can consume more in proportion to its weight and it is more perfectly assimilated. A pound of flesh on the baby lamb can therefore be made at a much less CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 125 cost than after he is older. Seeing that the young mutton commands by far the higher price it is plain that the earlier weight is put on the better so far as profit is concerned. The practice in England is to have in the hurdles in which the flock is usually confined, “MARY HAD FIVE LITTLE LAMBS.” ‘‘ereeps’’ or openings wide enough to let the lambs slip through while restraining the ewes. These creeps usually have small rollers at the sides so that the lambs as they grow and nearly fill the opening may squeeze through without injury to themselves or loosening of their wool. 126 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA Thus the lambs ‘‘run forward’’ to an enclosure of their own where they find fresh grazing of turnips or vetch or clover or grass, according to the situation and season, and in these small enclosures are kept troughs replenished regu- larly twice a day with some grain mixture. English feeders use great amounts of ‘‘cake,”’ which is either of linseed or cottonseed. This eake 1s made at American oi] mills where by pressure oil is extracted from the crushed seed. American feeders usually buy ‘‘oilmeal,’’ or ground cake whereas our British cousins prefer to buy the actual cakes and break them on the farm into bits as large perhaps as hickory nuts, or somewhat smaller for young lambs. English lambs come from the hurdles at the age of three or four months weighing 20 to 100 lbs. They will do as well in America, under right manage- ment, as the writer has frequently demonstrated in his own practice. The fact is that one must keep the ewes in any case and must feed them, so that there is a certain fixed expense con- nected with rearing the lambs. This expense produces a certain amount of growth; now by the addition of supp!ementary foods this growth may be greatly increased at very slight expense. The amount of extra food consumed by the young lamb to make an extra pound of growth will not cost more than one or two cents. To make a pound of growth on him after he has left his mother will cost from 31% to 5 cents. Then too, the early growth is what brings the highest price. And again the lamb that matures very early and gets away to market escapes a hun- CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 127 dred ills that he in wait for the lamb that re- mains on the farm for nearly a year, 80, alto- gether, the arguments are all for pushing the farm-born lambs as rapidly as possible by extra allowances of feed. Of course lambs that are pure-bred and in- tended to stay on the farm to maturity must be fed a different ration from those that are merely to get fat quick and end a short but happy and victorious life at the market. Stock lambs need abundant food but no forcing. Their ration aside from their mothers’ milk should be of oats and bran, with a trifle of oilmeal, clover and alfalfa hay, and in their ground feed there may be added a little fine ground bone- meal,--the steamed bone or some odorless pro- duct to be chosen of course. There is small danger of overfeeding these stock lambs in their infancy; they will the earlier go afield and learn there to seek their subsistence in the form of grass and herbage. Corn should not be fed to them, neither to the ewe lambs nor the ram lambs, for corn mainly makes fat and fat im- pedes vital functions rather than helps. The ram lambs developed on corn are slow, sluggish, early losing their usefulness; the ewes devel- oped on corn are uncertain breeders and often poor milkers. To develop bone and muscle and stamina in these stock lambs should be the aim and this is accomplished by feeding food rich in bone and muscle-making materials, of which wheat bran is easily among the first and oats comes next. They should have abundant chance of exercise too, which may be denied somewhat 128 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. to the lambs that are to go fat to an early mar- ket. Then there should be constant watchful- ness to avoid infection from parasites and if this is done the shepherd will have abundant reason to congratulate himself upon the splen- did growth of his stock lambs. FEEDING FOR THE MARKET. Supposing now the lamb crop is mostly to go fat to market as soon as ripe. We will assume that they have been born in winter, which is the proper season for all lambs to be born on farms, unless one can get them in the fall, and that they have comfortable quarters and their mothers have been so well fed that they have an abundance of milk for them. Next there must be provided a small room or pen in which the lambs can go and the ewes can not. This place must be of very convenient access, so that it is really easier for the lamb to go in than to re- main outside. This is because lambs have fleet- ing memories and are largely the creatures of opportunity. They will consume much more feed when it is right at their mouths than if they have to go even a few rods to seek it. This place, which we eall a ‘‘ereep,’’ must be in a light part of the barn and if the sun can shine in all the better, for lambs are attracted by sun- light and greatly benefited by it. In truth some of the most successful lamb growers have glass- roofed sheds for their use in winter and achieve thereby remarkable results. This creep need not be very large. If it is 12 feet square it will accommodate 50 lambs DORSET LAMBS ON THE WAY TO MARKET. { bame teeayo tems > as \ ~ me “es CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 1381 very nicely, as they will not all be in it at one time. It should be separated from the ewes’ part of the barn by a fence of vertical slats, spaced about 7 inches apart, the slats with rounded edges. This will permit the lambs to pass in and restrain the ewes. After a time the lambs will need some wider opening’s and then if small rollers are put up to permit them to squeeze between all the better. In the creep there must be some flat-bottomed troughs in which to feed grain and a hay rack for alfalfa hay, or clover if it is the best at hand. The troughs must be low to permit young lambs readily to reach them. As lambs delight to get into troughs with their feet they must be covered. To accomplish this let the end of the trough be a solid board 12 inches wide and ex- tending up 12 inches above the sides of the trough, pointed at the end like the gable of a house roof and put on this two boards like an inverted V. This makes a steep roof to the trough and effectually prevents the lambs get- ting their feet into it. This cover is readily lifted off when grain is putin. Attention to such small details as keep- ing troughs clean is essential to success in feed- ing lambs. Their sense of smell is acute and they discriminate sharply against anything but clean, fresh food. The first feed to put into the trough may be wheat bran. Scatter a trifle in the bottom and sprinkle it with brown sugar. If the lambs do not find it readily, take one up gently, not to frighten him, and carrying him to the trough tee SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. put a little of the sweetened bran in his mouth. He will get the taste and in many cases you can earefully put him on his feet with his head in the trough leaving him there. Once he gets a taste he will return and bring others with him. It is essential that the bran used be fresh. Cracked corn will be added to the bran; it also must be fresh and made of good, sound corn. It need not be cracked very fine. Better mix m a box or bin about 50 Ibs. of cracked corn, 50 Ibs. of wheat bran and 10 Ibs. of oilmeal, eoarse ground. If oats are available they may be added to this ration, ground at first, without changing the proportions of other things for oats themselves form nearly a balanced ration. Feed this twice or three times a day, placing in the troughs about what will be consumed and when next feeding time comes sweep out and give to the ewes what may be left so as to always have fresh feed before the lambs. Never wait for them to lick out the last particle before offering them fresh feed. You will soon be astonished at the amount the little fellows will consume and at the trans- formation in their appearance. The plump roundness of the baby forms is very beautiful and to watch them grow is a satisfaction and joy every day. Of course there are other things that may be fed. Wheat middlings may make a small part of the ration; it is too floury for best results, as the lambs do not like it so well. Rye will serve a useful purpose, though it seems less palatable than oats or barley. Soy beans may CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 1383 replace the oilmeal and are better. Soys are readily grown upon any farm and should be regularly sown where lambs are grown. Karly varieties of soy beans should be grown in the Northern states, threshed when ripe and the seeds kept for the lambs. The bean straw if kept dry has in it a good deal of nourishment also which the ewes will seek out and the coarser parts will serve as an excellent bedding. There is hardly any other food that will push forward lambs like soys. They have abundant protein and a good deal of bone material also. As compared with ordinary field peas they have 29 to 40 per cent of protein, while field peas have 16 per cent and cowpeas 18 per cent. Field peas are best adapted to New England, Canada and Michigan, with some regions of high alti- tude in the Rocky Mountains; soy beans to all the corn-belt. As the oilmeals are steadily in- creasing in price with possibilities of their fre- quent adulteration the shepherd can not afford to overlook sources of home-grown protein. In the Southern states the hairy vetch is a source of home-grown protein not to be over- looked. Further reference to this will be made when we take up the subject of field crops for sheep. The lamb will drink a good deal of pure water, even while sucking his mother. It should be readily available and always clean enough for human consumption. After the lambs are well started on feed the ewe lambs if they are designed to be kept upon the farm, and such ram lambs as may be worth 134 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. keeping, should be separated from the others and fed differently. They may have all the oats and bran they wish and some soy beans but are the better for having very little corn. It is best if they have the run with their mothers of a field and learn early to seek part of their food out- side, whereas the ones destined for market will AN ENGLISH ‘‘CREEP.” grow as well and fatten quicker to have their range somewhat restricted. The shepherd should keep close watch on the ewes, for there will come a time when they are no longer milking freely and then they will put their food on their backs. Rather than fatten them to their harm, unless they are to go to CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 135 market, the grain should be gradually eut down and it will be found that the lambs at this time will take more each day. After the fattening lambs are a few weeks old they love to shell off corn from the ear and erack it with their own teeth. They should have opportunity to do this. In fact, when they are six weeks old it is hardly worth while to shell or grind any more corn for them at all. They prefer it fresh shel- led by their own teeth. It is folly to spend effort in doing things that the lambs delight in doing for themselves. DRESSING LAMBS FOR FANCY WINTER MARKET. When the lambs reach a weight of 50 to 60 Ibs. or even less if they are very fat the fancy New York market will pay for them from $3 to $12 each if sent there by express nicely dres- sed and cooled. The prices depend upon how fat they are and what the season is. Big lambs, only moderately fat, sell much cheaper than small lambs that are very fat. For this trade the lambs are dressed in a special manner as the market requires. Mr. H. P. Miller, a suecessful ‘‘hot house’’ lamb grower, gives this as his method: ‘‘It is very important to have them thoroughly bled out. To secure this I have found it advantageous to hang the lamb by the hind feet in killing. Suspend a small singletree about six feet from the ground. Loop a small rope or strong twine about each hind leg and attach to the hooks of the singletree. With a sharp pointed knife 136 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. sever the artery and vein in the neck close to the head. Be sure to sever the artery. Bright red blood is the assurance. The veinous blood is dark. Severing the head with one blow of a sharp broad axe would cause no suffering and insure thorough bleeding. J remove the head with a knife as soon as the lamb ceases strug- gling. Clip the wool from the brisket and along a strip four or five inches wide upwards to the udder or scrotum, also from between the hind legs as in tagging sheep. Now open the lamb from the tail to the brisket. Slit the skin up the READY FOR MARKET. inside of the hind quarter about four inches and loosen it from the underlying muscles for two inches on either side of the openings for the attachment of caul fat. This should be re- moved from the stomachs before they are de- tached, and in very cold weather placed in warm water until ready to be used. Next re- move the stomach and intestines. In the early part of the season the liver, heart and lungs may be left in place but when the weather gets warm they must be removed. Carefully spread the caul fat over all the exposed flesh. Good CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 137 large toothpicks will hold it in place. Make small slits in it over the kidneys and pull them through. This part of the work requires care and skill to make the carcass look attractive. ‘*Be sure that all is clean and pretty. Hang in a cool place for 12 to 24 hours. The car- casses should not actually freeze but come close to it. Sew a yard of clean muslin about each lamb so as to cover all exposed surface. Then line a small crate with strong paper and place three lambs in it, tacking burlap over the top. Crate them just before shipping. Ice may be put between the lambs but not in them. Pre- pare for market as fast as ready, three or six at a time. Aim to slaughter regularly each week, if you have lambs in condition, and keep your commission firm informed as to how many you will send.’’ It is worth noting that for a period of years prices for these fancy fat winter lambs have steadily advanced and the supply though in- creasing has not been equal to the demand. There is, however, a wide variation in prices obtained and if one finds his lambs selling at a low price he had better investigate to see what is wrong. It is better to keep the lambs to sell alive in spring than dress them and pay express charges and commission for $3 to $4 each in winter. During January and February, how- ever, good lambs, such as any careful man can as easily make as any other sort, sell for from 48 to $12 each in New York with small prospect of oversupply for some time. 138 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. TREATMENT OF THE LATE BORN LAMBS. Naturally the larger part of the lambs will be born too late for the fancy trade. Nor would there be demand for all of them in the form of ‘‘faney hot house lambs.’’ ‘There is, however, abundant profit in fattening them to be sold afoot in April, May, June or July. Usually the highest prices are obtained in June. At that time the supply of fat lambs born on the ranges the previous summer and winter-fed is about exhausted and the supply of fat native winter or spring born lambs has never yet been ade- quate. To develop lambs for this live trade they should be fed just as advised for the winter lambs except that they should be permitted to take more exercise than if they are to be fin- ished at the earliest possible moment. When grass comes the lambs should be kept off of it until it is actually sweet. The sun must have time to get into it before it will be strong and good and to eat it before that time is a dam- age alike to the grass and the lambs Further- more after they have a taste of green grass they will not eat dry forage well, so there is loss all around Keep them on dry feed there- fore until there is abundant green grass and it is sweet, then you may let them go to it without fear of them shrinking. There is little danger of scouring from eat- ing grass after it has become sweet. The corn, of which they are now eating a great deal, has a tendency to prevent it and after a day or two MERINOS POSED FOR A PICTURE. 4 7 Pa vad * CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 141 they will go on as though nothing had been changed, happy indeed beyond words in the fresh spring sunshine and fine pasture, before flies have come or summer heat to oppress. Here is a great argument for having lambs born in winter, they may thus get such a vigor- ous start that when green grass comes they are able to make the most of it. There are two months in our trying climate of the corn-belt that make ideal natural conditions for making mutton cheaply; they are May and June, with sometimes a bit of April. Wherefore the shep- herd should plan to have his lambs big and strong when this time comes so that they may make the most of their opportunities. There is no profit as a general thing in carrying any over through July, August and September, save those that are destined to remain perma- nently to replenish the breeding flock. FEEDING CORN ON GRASS. While in winter time on dry feed it is essen- tial to feed bran, oilmeal or soy beans to sup- ply the requisite protein to the growing lambs there is not so much need of supplying protein when on grass, that is, if the lambs are destined for the butcher. Green grass is more nitrog- enous than dry hay and there are many clovers usually mixed in the grass so that a ration of corn (maize) alone will serve a good purpose. This may as well be fed in the ear, laying it in troughs or if there is a clean sward of thick grass the ears may simply be scattered about upon it, ina fresh spot each day. To do 142 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. this before the lambs are weaned it is of course necessary to fence off a part of the pasture away from the ewes, allowing only the lambs to have access to it. No more corn should ever be fed at a time than the lambs will consume and that they may eat it regularly care should be taken to see that every lamb is there at feed- ing time. If a few troughs are set close by in which a few handfuls of oats are strewn that the ewes can get, the shepherd can readily eall the whole flock up at feeding time and the lambs will rush through their creeps to get their corn while their mothers are munching the sparing allowance doled out to them. Gains on grass when lambs have had a good start in winter are surprisingly rapid. By the first of June the February lambs will often weight 80 Ibs. and drafts may be made and sent away if it is convenient to market in that man- ner, or all may be kept till they average about 80 Ibs., which will be early in June. If care- fully managed there will be no culls and all will be gone and the cash in the owner’s pocket be- fore the dread of parasites comes. Salt is an essential to the sheep and it is well to accustom them to the use of it and keep it at all times before them. It is especially use- ful in spring when grass comes and no doubt ehecks many bowel troubles when they have access to it. SUMMER SHADE. Shade is essential in our climate of the corn- belt. HEven in April sheep will begin to seek CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 148 the shade during the warmer parts of the day and by May and June it is very necessary. Where the pasture is near the barn the cool, dark lower story, where were the winter quar- ters, 1s the ideal place for the flock. It should A CARLOAD OF YEARLING WETHERS. be kept well bedded down and thus there is saved a good deal of fertility that would other- wise perhaps be heaped up in fence corners or beneath trees where it would do the pasture little good. The sheep prefer the darkness of 144 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. the barn to the semi-shadow of trees and it is very much better and safer for them for rea- sons that we will presently take up under the subject of parasite infestation. In this barn basement one should each day put down a little fresh hay and usually the flock will eat quite a bit of it. In connection with their green forage it is to them what dry bread and butter are to the boy eating green apples in summer time. It is even a good practice to salt the sheep in summer by sprinkling brine over dry hay in the barn, thus encouraging them to eat as much of it as they will. Of course there are locations where hay is hard to get and pasture is in excess There this would not be good practice, but all through the region of the ecorn-belt hay is abundant and really more eco- nomical to produce on high-priced land than pasture. Corn may be fed to the lambs also in the barn basement if the flock has access to it. There is but one thing to fear; that the place may be allowed to become foul so that fleeces will be soiled and feet. endangered but it is at- tention to these little things that assure success. Shade in fields may be had best by movable sheds. These may be made on runners, simple roofs about 16 feet square and not high, open at the sides, made of pine boards. They need not be rain-proof since sun is what we are seek- ing to shelter against. A shed of this size will shelter 40 sheep and as it may be frequently moved there will be an enrichment of a good many spots during the summer. The writer CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 145 has on the farm on which he lives a spot where his father forty years before had a temporary sheep shelter that still produces crops remark- able for their distinguishing greenness and rankness. There are reasons why we should not permit the sheep to stand where they will, along fences and beneath trees. First the manure is wasted there; then the shade is seldom really satis- factory. Sufficient in the early morning the sun has by noon moved so that it is no longer comfortable and the silly flock will suffer much before moving away. Worst of all is the dan- ger to the health of the sheep through parasitic infection. Lying much in one place there is an accumulation of droppings presumably bear- ing germs of various harmful parasites such as stomach worms, throat worms, nodular disease and the like. The droppings stimulate the growth of sweet, rich grasses here. The germs harbor on the roots and about the base of these grasses. Lambs lying in shade near by become hungry and venturing into the sun a lit- tle way nibble at these rich grasses. It is worth noting that sheep will the more greedily eat grass that grows strong, from manured land, than that which is thin and tough growing on poor soil. The lambs then nibbling this thick grass, which is thus kept short, take in many germs of stomach worms and other parasites which their mothers have deposited there with their manure. Thus disease creeps 1n to the flock. In England the writer has seen shepherds put- ting fences of hurdles about trees to prevent 146 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. ewes lying beneath them when on grass and ex- plaining that they found when the ewes laid in the shade of those trees they ‘‘took cold from the draughts and coughed.’’ The facts were cor- rectly observed but the reasoning was defective ; it was not the ‘‘draught’’ that made the sheep cough but the throat worms and lung worms in- stead that gained entrance from the infected area of the tree shade. MARKETING THE SPRING LAMB. Through Virginia and Kentucky there are many sheep breeders who make a practice of growing their lambs on grass alone, having them born usually in March and putting them off fat in June. They usually contract them ahead for about $6 per ewt. They find this business very profitable and thus their rough lands devoted to sheep pastures steadily im- prove rather than deteriorate. ~ It is a temptation to the young shepherd to keep the lambs over till fall or perhaps to feed them again the following winter. This seldom pays so well as to have them fat early and get rid of them at a good price. When they come to market as late as August and from then to Christmas they must compete with lambs grown on the ranges under much more favor- able conditions for cheap production. More- over, the lambs during the hot summers of the eorn-belt do not gain much fat; if in fact they hold what they made in May and June they do well and there is besides that terrible danger,— the parasite. CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 147 DOCKING. Unless one is certain that his lambs will go early to market, say at an age not exceeding three months, he had better dock and castrate them. Tails are unnecessary appendages to a modern sheep and are apt to become fouled. A docked lamb has a squarer look and seems fatter than one with a tail. What. blood goes to nourish a useless tail would add to the growth of the rest of the body no doubt. Dock- ing may be done at a very early age, within ten days after birth if the lamb is strong, and there is then slight shock. Tails may be sev- ered with one stroke of a sharp knife, (cutting from the under side) or: by use of a mallet and chisel, but a better and safer way when pure- bred and well fed lambs are docked is by use of hot docking pinchers. These are readily made by the country blacksmith. They are shaped like large shoeing pinchers only much heavier and with a wider opening to admit any tail, for some- times one will wish to dock a mature sheep or cut off a scrotum from an old ram. They should be thin at the edge but not very sharp and thick back of it to hold the heat. The man- ner of operation is to have a board with a hole bored through it of a proper size to admit the tail of the lamb. This board protects the adja- cent parts against the heat of the pinchers. They are heated to redness and quickly sever the tail which will not bleed a drop. Some dis- infectant is then applied and the lamb let. go. After flies come one must watch that the stumps 148 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. do not become infested with maggots; there is no other danger. Pure-bred and well fed lambs will sometimes bleed to death when their tails are cut with knife or chisel. When no docking pinchers are at hand the stumps may be corded for a few hours. CASTRATION OF OLD RAMS. These docking pinchers are convenient things to have for castration of old rams, or of any sheep past the age of lambhood. The method is to lay the ram on his back; one man seizes the scrotum and testicles and pulls them out from the body and another simply severs them all together with the docking pinchers used very hot. There is no bleeding, though the operation should not be too hastily performed, as there is need of a moment’s contact with the hot iron to sear the arteries. The application of dis- infectants completes the operation. A thin board may keep the heat from scorching the body. The writer has thus operated on a six- year-old ram and had him get up and go to eat- ing hay quite unconcerned. It is probable that the hot iron destroys the sensibility to pain to quite an extent. CASTRATION OF LAMBS. Castration of young lambs is a very simple process. The lambs should be two weeks old and strong. The end of the scrotum is cut off, the testicles made to emerge and are then pulled out with the adhering cords. Some _ shep- CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 149 herds practice seizing them with their teeth; this is a common practice on many Western ranches. It is not usually necessary to apply anything in case of these young lambs but a mixture of lard and turpentine, or tallow and turpentine: combined in proportion so as to be soft will deter germs and make healing more rapid. There should not be a loss from dock- ing and castration of more than one lamb in 500 and it is a satisfaction to have both done so that whatever age the lambs may reach they will not in marketing suffer a ‘‘dock’’ because of their ‘‘bucky’’ condition. WEANING. As a rule it is not necessary to wean lambs before they go to market. If they are fed right they will while sucking their mothers reach a weight of 75 to 85 lbs. if of mutton breeds. There is nothing better than mothers’ milk ex- cept more mothers’ milk! Lambs that are to remain on the farm, however, should be sep- arated from the ewes when ten or twelve weeks old, or when the advent of warm weather makes parasitic infection a danger. An exception may be made of the ewe lambs, which may in some eases run with their mothers until they are weaned naturally. The advantage of weaning is that it makes possible the separation of the young and old and thus the young things are put by themselves on clean pasture where there can be no contaminated grass and thus they es- cape infection and parasitic diseases. The proper way to wean lambs is by taking away 150 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. the ewes, leaving the lambs in the pasture where they are accustomed to run. Build in the pasture a small yard or corral having creeps through which the lambs can run; the ewes, after being away from the lambs for 12 hours, are returned and yarded there when the lambs will run in and milk them out, and when they have again gone out to feed the ewes may be taken away for another period. Thus there is a gradual separation, neither ewes nor lambs experiencing a shock, and if the ewes are put on rather sparce picking they will soon be dry. There is but one danger, viz.; there may be some ewes yet milking so heavily that their lambs will suffer from gorging upon their return. The watchful shepherd will be aware of such a case and catching her will milk her out somewhat before letting the lamb at her, or if it be a late- born lamb allowing it to run with her a little longer. CHAP TER. “Vaz SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. THE EWE FLOCK. In winter the shepherd is a god to his flock. Shut away from natural sources of food supply the sheep depend entirely upon his providence and therefore their thrift rests entirely upon his knowledge and willingness to give. In sum- mer Nature provides forage in abundance and turned out in the fields the sheep can choose as their instincts prompt them. They should then thrive upon pasture as nowhere else. They would were it not for two things: one that the shepherd too often considers a ‘‘pasture’’ as being an enclosure surrounded by a good fence, regardless of what the forage may be within; the other that in summer time come pests of flies, maggots and worms, internal par- asites. The shepherd who thoroughly learns the lesson of prevention of these pests will find his work a joy and will stay with it and make a large profit from his flock. The man who sim- ply turns the flock to pasture and gives it no more attention or thought will very likely find himself confronted with a lot of diseased and (151) 152 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. unprofitable sheep within a few years and his farm perhaps so infected with germs of para- sites that there is no longer any profit in keep- ing sheep there. Most of the trouble comes from the internal parasites, and while there is a long list of them that afflict sheep nearly all the trouble in our country comes from two or three species. By far the most prevalent and troublesome is the twisted stomach worm (naemonchus contortus). This inhabits the fourth stomach of the ewe and she carries it through the winter even though she may seem to be in good health. In spring and during summer the worms become filled with eggs, ‘‘ripen’’ and pass away. Just how the young germs then re-enter the sheep or find a home in the more tender stomachs of the young lambs no one knows. ‘They probably hatch in shallow pools of stagnant water (infec- tions in Texas and New Mexico are thought to be by this means) or they attach themselves to the moist grass close to the ground and are tak- en in from that position. It is noticed that old and rich sheep pastures covered with short, sweet grass are frequently the most fatal to young lambs even when there is no stagnant water in them. It is not too much to say that the stomach worm has done more to discourage sheep hus- bandry in the corn-belt of America than all other causes put together and many a man has gone out of business from the depredations of this litthe enemy who did not even know that such a pest existed. IN AN OLD-COUNTRY PASTURE. SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 155 The symptoms of infection from stomach worms are first; the wool appears lusterless and if pressed with the hand does not spring out again as when the animal is in vigorous health. Looking more closely, the red in the veins in and about the eye seems pale and when you part the wool the skin has lost its pinkness and if the disease has progressed far it looks white and chalky. There is a disordered di- gestion and perhaps a depraved appetite, the animal may gnaw earth, rotten wool or bark, there may be diarrhea or constipation. Before death comes there will probably be ‘‘black scours.’’? Old sheep seldom die from stomach worms but are run down in vitality by the pest while lambs may die in great numbers. Stomach worms seldom ever trouble sheep in cool regions and there is some evidence that a temperature of 50 degrees in the soil prevents their development. Therefore they do not spread through the flock until warm weather, which may come in May and certainly comes in June. Up to that time the lamb crop is com- paratively safe to run with the mothers; after that the idea of the twisted stomach worm must be kept ever in mind. It may be well here to call attention to the fact that there are considerable regions in America where fear of the stomach worm is not felt. In Massachusetts, Maine, New Hamp- shire and Vermont there is little or no evidence of Hemonchus infestation. Northern New York and the mountain regions of that section should be almost exempt from danger if flocks 156 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. are properly mauaged. Ontario in Canada, seems to be without the dread pest. The writer has seen wonderful flocks in Vermont and On- tario managed very simply on thick, sweet blue-grass and white clover pastures and with- out a trace of this malady. The road-side sheep of Ontario graze perennially on the same restricted areas and escape infection. So in northern Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula es- pecially, is a grand field for easy and almost eare-free shepherding. Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin should prove little subject to this pest. One evidence that cool climates deter the de- velopment of the Hemonchus contortus is seen in northern England and in Scotland. On the Cheviot hills flocks grow as thick as the grass will bear and for many centuries this has been so. In Scotland the same is true and the writer in a rather careful study of conditions there saw no evidences whatever of infestation of this pest. There is some parasitism in that re- gion but it is more likely to be of tapeworms or the brain parasite that causes ‘‘gid’’ or ‘*staggers.”’ It is a matter of wonder to the writer that more men do not in New England and our other northern border states turn their attention to sheep growing on a scale large enough to make it a business. There should be whole regions given up to the breeding of sheep and such breeds as the Cheviot, Lincoln or Cotswold would there find a congenial home, while Shropshires and Southdowns would thrive well SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 157 and furnish the market with prime mutton. Shepherding without the fear of stomach worm infestation is a delightful occupation. The simplest method of keeping the lambs in health in the summer time is to separate them from the ewes and put them on grazing that has had no sheep on it for a year, or at least that has had no sheep since the previous COTSWOLD EWES. fall. We will take up the care of the lambs a little later. The ewe flock is easily kept in health. Ma- ture sheep are resistent to parasites unless they are depleted in vitality by reason of being bred too young, or by suckling their lambs when poorly nourished. It is only necessary to give them sound grass and as good a variety of herbage as is at hand and to change them from 158 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. one pasture to another about once in ten days or a fortnight. The old adage, ‘‘change of pasture makes fat sheep,’’ is true and it de- pends upon two reasons: change gives chance for fresh herbage to spring up and it gives par- asitic germs chance to die before finding again a living place in the body of its former host. It is better then to divide large sheep pastures into several divisions and during warm weather, say about the middle of May till the middle of September, to change the flock from one division to another letting cattle or horses follow them, or letting the pastures have rest till the flock comes back again. It would not help matters any to keep sheep in each division and change by transposition, a common and sinful practice, as one lot would readily infect the other. It is not good manage- ment therefore fully to stock a pasture with sheep in any part of the United States east of a line running about with the 100th meridian, or roughly along the western limit of the corn-belt. The exception to this rule would be in the case of high mountain pastures or in the far north, where the air and soil are cool enough to deter the spread of parasites. These stomach worms are not very hard to destroy or drive out of the body of the sheep. The writer introduced the gasoline treatment into the United States and it has given excellent results in his practice. Coal tar creosote is said to be as good and perhaps better. Some coal tar dips are used successfully in destroy- ing the stomach worm. We will give explicit SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 159 directions for administering these remedies further on. A SYSTEM OF MANAGEMENT THAT INSURES A HEALTHY FLOCK, Two men in America fought stomach worms all through the disastrous years of the 90s, when little was known to help; they found light, they conquered the pests in a measure, and kept on keeping sheep and studying flock manage- ment. Finally each made a journey to Eng- land and studied the conditions there with a view to solving the problem for America. There they found hurdling the best answer to the question. Independently of each other they reached the same conclusions as to the practical solution of the question in America. Dr. H. B. Arbuckle of West Virginia and the writer were the two men. But they wish to give all due credit to the Department of Zoology of the Bu- reau of Animal Industry at Washington for at last giving accurate details of the life history of the Hzemonchus contortus (formerly called Strongylus contortus) for without the details that we now have no certain plan could have been formulated. The basis of this plan is the fact that lambs are born free from parasitic infection; they are healthy. It is only necessary to keep them healthy by preventing infection. Their moth- ers carry over in their bodies the germs that will infect them in the form of mature stomach worms, which when ripe pass away in the drop- pings and thus infect the pasture. When the 160 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. temperature is below 40° the eggs will not hatch. When it is above that they will hatch out in a few hours or in a week or so, depending upon how warm it is. Freezing or drying soon kills the unhatched eggs. So it is seen that ewes will not pollute a field in Winter, their drop- pings are sure to be soon frozen, at least in the region where sheep are mostly kept. But if the tiny worm hatches from the egg it feeds for a time upon the materia! of the manure and con- tinues to grow till it is about one-thirtieth of an inch long. Then it creeps up on a blade of grass and waits to be swallowed by some lamb, after that it finishes its growth within the fourth stomach of the lamb, and, incidentally, finishes the lamb as well. Under the heading of ‘‘ Diseases of Sheep’’ will be found entire the very interesting bulle- tin of Dr. B. H. Ransom on this subject. Now how to manage a flock with safety and profit on natural grass. To begin with the ewe flock should be treated for stomach worms. This is best done in the fall, when they come from pasture. It may be again done in the spring before their lambs come. Remedies for treatment will be found under the heading ‘‘Diseases of Sheep.’’ The writer is of the opinion that use of some of the coal-tar dips, in small doses, much diluted, will eventually be recognized as most efficient. This treatment alone has doubled the weight of lambs in some experiments in Kentucky. Next, the flock shouid at the approach of spring weather be confined to the yard and_ shed. There STUDIES IN SHEEP CHARACTER. SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 163 are two reasons for this; the one that it is better for the grass, and thus in the long run better for the flock, and the other that there is thus no contamination of land over which the lambs will later feed. If it were possible to wholly eradicate the worms from the ewes by treatment this care would not be needed, but unfortunately it seems almost impossible with our present knowledge to kill all of the worms by any medication. While confined to the yard the lambs will probably be born. It is essen- tial that the flock be well fed at this time so that the ewes be full of milk. If desired there may be provided a run to a rye field, or to some grass pasture that will not be afterwards used that summer, to help stimulate the milk flow. By May 15 probably the grass will be so forward that the flock may be turned out for good. Now begins the new management. Instead of turn- ing the flock to a large pasture to roam over it at will turn them on a very small part of it. How best to manage this will depend upon cir- eumstances. The writer thinks that in our land of small supply of labor and much hurry and turmoil during the summer season it is safest to divide the pastures by permanent wire fenc- es. These are not costly and need not be very high. We will, then, turn the whole flock to- gether into the first division; none shall be scat- tered about. Of course there may be two. flocks, one with lambs and a dry flock, but the dry flock had better be put apart somewhere or else put with the ewes. It will not do to let anything interfere with the regular rotation of 164 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. these pastures. Now once in this pasture the flock will be allowed to eat it down close to the ground That will not hurt the grass, for all will go on in a short time and the grass may spring up again. This is how pastures are often managed in England by hurdles. Doctor Ransom says that sheep may probably be safely left on May pasture for two weeks. We wil! shorten this time to 10 days, to make sure. That is, the germs falling to the earth could not before 10 days find their way back into any sheep or lamb, and we are going to move the flock on before they are able to get in. Now in the division between this pasture and the next we will place creeps so fixed that the lambs can readily pass through to the next enclosure. This they will early learn to do, and so they will be eating the fresher parts of the herbage in advance of the ewes. In ten days then the whole flock will go for- ward one pasture, the lambs yet having access te the fresher feeding on ahead. Doctor Ran- som says we will need for this sure treatment the following divisions: For May, 2 pastures. For June, + pastures. For July, 4 pastures. For August, + pastures. For September, 3 pastures. For October, 2 pastures. That makes 19 enclosures in all and insures that the flock shall be kept in absolute freedom from infection throughout the year. However, one will not absolutely need so SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 165 many enclosures as that. By June many of the lambs will be ripe, by July many of the others, and even when the lambs are born late when managed in this way they should all be ripe as peaches by the middle of August. After the lambs are gone the ewes can be managed a little less carefully, especially if they are in strong condition, though there is a comfort in knowing that every stomach worm germ that falls to the earth must die from lack of a host. To make this thing doubly successful put flat bottomed troughs in the pastures ahead, where the lambs run, and put feed in them; any sort of grain, corn, oats, barley, bran, coarse-ground or broken cake or oil meal. Thus the lambs will grow like weeds and pay many times over for their grain. Thus more sheep may be car- ried on the same ground than would be possible under ordinary treatment. There is scarcely any limit to the number of sheep that can be safely kept on an eastern farm under this sys- tem of management. The limit is, of course, the size of the farm and the amount of grass. Even this can be greatly helped by soiling. Racks may with great profit be placed in the fields and the ewes fed green crops, fresh mown oats, peas, clover or alfalfa. Thus twice as many ewes may be kept as the grass alone will support. The writer would suggest that about 400 ewes would keep one man nicely busy in caring for them and their lambs, haul- ing water to them, soiling somewhat, and feed- ing the lambs. He would not hesitate to under- take the management of 400 ewes on one farm 166 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. in any part of the corn belt, the regions most in- fested with stomach worms. There is no busi- ness more sure of profit than this. Lambs sell remarkably well and the prospect is that as the western ranges are diminished that they will sell better for the ravages of the stomach worm deter eastern farmers from going into the business. The two serious obstacles to be overcome are; first, the question of water and next, the question of shade. Water is readily hauled in mounted tanks as it usually is in Hngland. Shade is not absolutely essential. The writer has seen very fat sheep in the San Joaquin valley of California confined to the al- falfa meadows and with no shade whatever. Probably a system of canvas sheds, long and narrow, would not be very expensive nor too troublesome for one man to move and set up un- aided. Any sort of good grass will serve. Kentucky blue grass is to be preferred, perhaps brome grass (Bromus inermis) is better, clovers may be utilized and oats sown to be grazed off, with peas. The writer does not hesitate to say that he looks forward to seeing many sheep farms es- tablished in the eornbelt each carrying from 200 to 500 ewes and managed nearly under this sys- tem. He feels confident that no other branch of the live stock industry holds forth better pros- pects. It should be borne in mind that the earlier the lambs are born the sooner they will be gone to market, and thus the fewer pastures will be needed. Also the market is usually best in SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 167 June and July, after the flood of fed lambs has passed and before the new crop from the ranges has started to come. Besides the stomach worm there is the worm that makes the nodular disease of the intestines. Any observant man who has dissected a ma- ture sheep has often noticed on the small intes- tines little nodules or ‘‘knots.’’ These are really small tumors, filled with a greenish, cheesy substance. They do not do much harm when they are few in number but the trouble is a cumulative one and the numbers of the nodules increase until after a time digestion and absorp- tion are much interfered with. Sometimes parts of the intestines becomes calcified, that is, so im- pregnated with lime salts that they are almost like stone. Death ensues in a longer or shorter time from the nodular disease. It does not work quickly as does the disease caused by the stomach worm. The worm causing these tu- mors 1s called esophagostoma columbianum. This nodular disease is a hard one to cure, if indeed it is possible to cure it at all after it is established. Prevention is about all that we ean do. Dr. W. H. Dalrymple of the Louisiana Kixperiment Station has shown, however, that it is readily communicable from affected ewes to their lambs through the medium of the pas- ture. He has also demonstrated that where diseased ewes are kept.confined to the barn and their lambs allowed to run on clean pasture not contaminated by the presence of any old sheep, the lambs remain healthy and thus a new and healthful stock can be had even from a dis- 168 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. eased flock. None of these diseases originates spontaneously. There are no other known hosts of these diseases than sheep, goats and perhaps deer, so it 1s merely a question of start- ing with the lambs, born free of all parasites, and keeping them in health by putting them on fresh and uninfected pasture. USE OF SOWN PASTURES. The easy way of management is to use only the wild or natural grass pastures, the same ones year after year, but there is often great good resultant from sowing special pasture crops for the flock. Rye sown in the fall will afford very useful pasture before Christmas and again very early in spring. If vetches are sown with the rye in mild latitudes they will to- gether in spring make good grazing, and clover sown in March will take the land after the rye is gone. Rye is nota rich grazing crop; in fact, is a poor one, but it adds the element of suc- culence to the diet and thus has its value. Then it gives employment and exercise in the way that the ewe likes best to take it, wandering about the field and picking here and there. Then there is almost no danger at all of para- site infection from grazing rye, or from graz- ing any sown crop for that matter. Rye where clover is sown with it should not be too closely orazed after the clover gets started and it is well to cut it for hay before it heads. If per- mitted to head it becomes woody and makes FEEDING LAMBS ON A HILLSIDE PASTURE. —> ¥ es 4 re 4 ke at ee Lstynedie pad tdi <. yey - + oe < 4 ‘ : ? : ‘ ' vats “ , “ Les ») “« ‘) . ‘ LU "wy . ‘ i bah +f re us * ‘PA ow hb SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. wg very inferior hay, and the clover does not come on again so quickly. OATS AND ALFALFA PASTURE. Oats sown early in spring with: clover or al- falfa form an excellent pasture for about two months in late spring and early summer, fol- lowing the use of rye. Oats should be sown on good soil or should be well fertilized and may be sown rather thickly, as much as two bushels per acre, with about a peck of clover or alfalfa. It the land is well drained, a clay loam with limestone in it, alfalfa will make the best growth and pasture. Red clover however, thrives on thinner soils than alfalfa and is the pioneer among the legumes. On any rich lime- stone clay soils, however, alfalfa is the queen of forage crops from Labrador to the Gulf. In depasturing oats where legumes have been sown with them some judgment must be exercised else the delicate clovers will suffer. It is well to allow the oats to get up about eight inches high, then turn in and permit the sheep to eat them down pretty close, which should be done in three or four days. If there are not enough sheep to do that, divide the field by temporary fences or hurdles, depasturing a part at a time. As soon as the oats are eaten down take the sheep off and let the plants come again. They may thus be repeatedly grazed and the result will be a beautiful stand of clover or alfalfa. After midsummer, however, it may be wise to keep the flock entirely off this field, letting ci? SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. the clover or alfalfa get strong to withstand the trial of the coming winter. Young clover and alfalfa should never be grazed hard nor be eaten close the first year else the stand will be seriously weakened. CLOVER AND ALFALFA PASTURE. By all odds the most useful summer pastures in the cornbelt are those composed of clover or alfalfa. There are several distinguishing advantages in these crops: they renew the soil, they are rich in protein and add to the size, health and vigor of the sheep; they afford a ereat amount of grazing and they are almost ab- solutely free from danger of carrying parasit- ic infection. The reason of this healthfulness of these plants is that sheep crop the higher leaves and stems, leaving the parts close to the ground and thus escape germs that may lurk down close to the earth. Hither red clover or alfalfa is too richly a nitrogenous product, however, to be grazed alone. Sheep confined to either of them must eat too much protein and therefore will crave food of more carbonaceous or starchy composi- tion. They will greedily eat grasses or even hay or dry straw to help balance their ration. Therefore it is wise to sow a mixture of grasses with the clovers. The best grasses for this purpose are smooth brome grass and orchard grass. Hither of these come on quickly and vive a continuous grazing with the clovers. Of the two, brome grass (Bromus inermis) is by far the better, yielding more grazing and be- SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 173 ing better relished by the stock. Indeed this brome grass is one of the best pasture grasses we have and of easy culture, though it should always be sown in connection with some clover, else it fails to vield as it should. Red clover and alfalfa should not be mixed together. If they are the red clover having the habit of more vigorous growth at first crowds badly its slower neighbor. It is wise, however, to put about 10 per cent of alfalfa seed in all clover mixtures sown on suspected alfal- fa soil, for the small amount of alfalfa will in- fect the field with the alfalfa bacteria so that in after years it may be all profitably sown to al- falfa alone. DANGER FROM CLOVER AND ALFALFA PASTURE. Sheep grazing leguminous crops often suffer from hoven, or bloat, caused by the fermenta- tion of the tender leaves within the paunch. The greatest danger of this is when the clover is young and tender and growing rapidly. After alfalfa becomes woody there is not much danger from bloating. Nor is there so much danger when grasses are mixed with the clovers in the pasture. After sheep become ac- customed to eating the clovers, they have then learned somewhat by instinct how much to store within. Pasturing on clovers is never abso- lutely safe, yet certain simple rules will almost always prevent trouble. First, the clovers should have reached nearty to the blossoming stage before the sheep are turned in. 174 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. The sheep should not be hungry. They should have a preliminary course of feeding of some sort till their appetites are well sated. Perhaps a fill-up on good grass pasture will generally best accomplish this. They should go on the clover or alfalfa pas- ture after eating all they will of other things at about ten o’clock in the morning, at a time when they naturally prefer to cease eating and go to he in the shade. They should be given salt as soon as put upon pasture, and salt mixed with air-slaked lime should be kept before them. They should never thereafter be removed night or day, rain or shine, as long as they are desired to graze the field. Of course they may have the run of an ad- jacent grass pasture, and be permitted to go and come at will, but they must never be taken away even for a few hours and allowed to get hungry and then returned to the clover or alfal- fa field. If they are, there is danger that they will gorge themselves too suddenly and bloating may result. The writer devotes considerable space to the subject because he has had a long and success- ful experience in pasturing clover and espec- ially alfalfa with sheep, and in his practice he has found these rules essential to success. It is well worth the risk, seeing that this pasture returns such well nourished and healthy sheep and is so free from danger of parasitic infec- tion. The writer has annually lost from 2 to 4 per cent from bloat on alfalfa pasture, com- SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 175 monly of animals not in the best health, and if it has returned the other 96 or 98 per cent in fine health to him, he considers the sacrifice of small amount. The following remedies for a bloated sheep are good: When first in distress, administer three tablespoonfuls of raw linseed oil in which is a teaspoonful of turpentine. If this does not relieve at once, tie or hold a large corn cob or stick of similar size cross- ways in the mouth like a bridle bit; hold the head up, stand astride the ewe and seek gently to press out the gas with the knee. Do not use too much force. Pour several buckets of very cold water slowly on the distended side over the paunch. This often of itself relieves the distress by stop- ping the accumulation of gas. If there is too much distension for these measures to relieve, make an incision on the left side, high up, where the greatest disten- sion is seen, and let the gas escape. A trochar is best for this but a penknife will serve. The incision should be just large enough to insert some small tube—a small joint of cane fishing pole, a pipe stem or goose quill. Keep hold of the tube, else it will slip within the paunch and be lost and perhaps do serious damage to the sheep. After relief has been had disinfect the wound. It should not be large enough to need stitches but care must be had that flies do not blow it. Pine tar will re- 176 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. pel flies. The wool should be cut away from the wound. There will be some vears when there will not be occasion for any remedy whatever and with the same treatment there will be at other times more or less trouble. During hot and wet YEARLING OXFORD RAM. weather when alfalfa is stimulated to very rap- id growth more trouble may be expected. The writer has been in the habit of pasturing alfalfa and vet allowing the sheep to shade in the barn, permitting them to come off in the morning when it gets too hot for their comfort. He has, however, been careful that a boy should SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 177 stir them out and send them fieldward again by three or four o’clock in the afternoon. In sowing alfalfa that probably may be pas- tured, be sure to sow a mixture of brome grass (Bromus inermis) with it. A light scattering of brome seed is best, else it will soon crowd out LEICESTER RAM. the alfalfa. We have had no difficulty in erad- icating the brome grass when afterward the fields have been cultivated. ' The writer has solved most of the problems of summer management in the way outlined. One serious trouble, however, remains for solu- 178 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. tion. The ewes will often get too fat under such treatment and sometimes refuse to breed reg- ularly. He has not yet found a solution of this problem. In England, where this often occurs, the fat ewes would go for mutton and there would end that difficulty, but where one has a flock of pure-bred sheep of considerable value this is not a satisfactory solution for America. Some manner of exercising the flock will probably prove the best cure for the sterility but as a business proposition with a grade flock it is no very serious matter. Where one is within reach of tracts of rough and poor mountain pasture the problem is solved in a natural way, by turning the flock onto this thin grass where they must take abun- dant exercise by walking and climbing and will not find an excess of food. This is the natural way of preventing an excess of flesh. It is not a safe plan to attempt reduction of flesh by over pasturing of small and fertile fields. The resuit is to cause the ewes to gnaw into the ground for the herbage there and para- sitic infection is pretty sure to follow. THE USE OF RAPE. Rape belongs to the same order of plants as the cabbages and rape leaves have a similar taste and appearance as cabbages. On rich soil rape yields an astonishing amount of for- age, which must be eaten green, as owing to its watery nature it can not be cured into hay. There seems a peculiar affinity between the cab- bage family and the sheep. Common cabbages, SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 179 thousand-headed kale, rape, swede turnips— all are greedily eaten and make good, healthful development. Rape comes in to good play during the drouths of autumn and after cool, frosty weather has Stopped the growth of grass in the fall. It may be sown in the corn at the time of the last work- ing, using about three or four pounds of seed to the acre and letting the cultivator cover it. Should the season prove moderately moist there- after the rape will come on and be ready to make a vigorous growth as soon as the corn is cut. By the middle of October it may be waist high over the field and will afford an immense amount of grazing until Christmas or later. Care should be taken not to turn on rape early in the morning in late fall when it is frosted as every leaf that is bent at that time will black- en and decay. It takes a cold of about 12 de- grees to injure rape if it is not disturbed until it has thawed again. Sheep will fatten on rape though an addition of grain is profitable and access to a grass pas- ture or the regular feeding of good hay in con- nection with it is very desirable. There is some danger from bloat in rape feeding, though the writer has never had to treat a sheep for rape bloating nor lost one. The Dwarf Essex seems the best variety to SOW. CABBAGES. In fitting sheep for the show ring cabbages are almost indispensable and for feeding in fall and early winter they are most excellent. In 180 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. many places cabbage grows luxuriantly and a given amount of sheep feed can probably be as cheaply grown from this plant as in any other way. In considering these foods it must be borne in mind that a certain portion of succu- lence is absolutely necessary to the sheep if it is to be kept in perfect health. It is less trou- ble to grow the common farm crops of grain and hay and sheep can be maintained upon them alone, but not in their highest degree of health and profit. There is also in the rape, turnips and cabbages some quality that makes for healthful growth of wool. PUMPKINS. Among the best autumn and early winter supplementary foods for sheep are pumpkins. They are readily grown in the cornfield or in a separate field by themselves and yield a large amount of feed to the acre. Our method of growing is to use pumpkin seeds to replant with in the cornfield, putting them in wherever missing hills occur. In this manner we have se- sured as high as two tons of pumpkins to the acre without in the least injuring the crop of corn, provided the season proved favorable. In fact, the shading of the ground between the corn rows by the wide leaves of the pumpkin vines serves to help conserve the moisture when it is most needed and the corn is often the better for the association of the vines. It is safer, however, to plant pumpkins by themselves. Pumpkins serve the flock in two ways: first, SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 181 as a direct and healthful food of considerable nutritive value and yet never dangerous from excessive richness, and next from the direct me- dicinal value of the seeds. Pumpkin seeds are among the best vermifuges known. They should never be removed from the pumpkins but fed all together, and if fed in considerable amounts, the direct and immediate improve- ment in the flock will be very apparent. Tape- worms have never troubled the writer’s flock in the least and no other reason can be attrib- uted than the annual liberal pumpkin feeding. The way to feed pumpkins is to strew them about the pasture without cutting them open at all, or at least cutting only a few of them. If many are cut the sheep eat only the soft inside parts at first, with the seeds, and might in this way get too many seeds for their good, whereas when they must gnaw a way into the pumpkin they will eat it up clean before attacking an- other. The pumpkins keep better to be scat- tered over the field than to be piled in heaps, at least before frost strikes them. The secret in growing pumpkins is, first, to have the land rich, then to plant a great sur- plus of seeds. The striped-cucumber beetle rev- els on pumpkin leaves, and if not enough are planted for him and you also he will reap the entire harvest at an early date. They may be thinned after beginning to vine. It is particularly desirable to have the ewe flock thriving and increasing in flesh at time of breeding. Not only will the lambs con- ceived at such a time be of superior vigor but 182 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. there will be a larger number of twins among them. CARE OF THE FEET. When the sheep are turned to pasture in the spring their feet should be carefully trimmed and shortened. It is easier to do this, if they are permitted to go in the wet grass for a day or two and are taken in while their hoofs are yet soft. They will at such a time cut like cheese, whereas if they are trimmed when dry they will be very horny in texture. Nature evidently intended the sheep for climbing over very rocky soil where the feet would be subjected to rapid wear. It is prob- able, too, that in selecting individuals for their superior wool growth the horn growth of the feet has kept apace with the wool growth in some degree, since there is a relationship be- tween horn growth and wool. In any event it is very unlikely that with the amount of travel needed on arable farms the sheep will sufficient- ly wear down their feet to relieve the shepherd of need to trim them twice a year, and with some breeds more often. Unless the feet are kept trimmed they will become deformed and the sheep will stand on one side of the foot, with the ankle turned over, giving doubtless some pain and a very awkward look. The aim of trimming should be to keep the feet as short as possible, not to cut to the quick, so that they may be able to stand natur- ally and squarely upon them. It is probable that lack of trimming is in some degree re- SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 1838 sponsible for disease of the feet. Diseases may occur, unfortunately, even in feet that have been well trimmed, and the subject must have at- tention. FOOT-ROT AND FOOT-SCALD. The shepherd commonly makes a distinction between a simple contagious affection of the foot called foot-scald and the real and very serious disease, also contagious, called foot- rot. There seems reason to believe that there is a form of foot-seald that rapidly goes through a flock yet readily yields to treatment that is distinct from the more severe and less easily eradicated foot-rot. | It is the belief of the writer, however, that quite often the shepherd hides his genuine foot- rot behind the more harmless appellation. There is, however, an inflammation of the skin between the claws of the foot that does not extend beneath the horny covering of the foot itself and that yields quite readily to a simple treatment of putting the sheep upon a dry foot- ing, cleansing from filth and an application of some coal tar dip or earbolie aeid. When the disease has penetrated beneath the shell of the foot and there is found there a wa- tery, evil-smelling exudation it is genuine foot- rot and should have immediate and thorough treatment, with preventive measures to pre- clude its spreading to the rest of the flock. First, it is necessary to pare away all the horn that hides the diseased surface. The dis- ease being one of germ origin, there is no hope 184 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. of cure except through the complete destruction of the germs, and they must therefore be uncoy- ered from their hiding. A sharp knife in the hands of a careful and thorough man is a kind thing to the afflicted sheep, even though it may cause some temporary pain. When once the diseased surface is laid bare it is only necessary to wet it well with a-strong solution of blue vitriol (sulphate of copper), or butter of antimony, to bind it up if much horn has been cut away and keep the sheep on dry footing for a time. It is necessary, however, to prevent the spread of the disease through the flock. To do this all feet should be carefully trimmed and any sore ones given individual treatment. Then a trough 6” wide in the bottom, 12” wide at the top, 12” deep and about 10’ long should be made of three two-inch planks. This must be enclosed with hurdles so that the sheep may be compelled to pass through it. The writer has fastened such a trough at the door of the sheep barn so that in order to pass out the flock must pass through the trough. Then it was only necessary to confine the flock for a time and they would of their own accord go out, each one walking through the trough. This treatment was given daily for a week or so, as it took little of the shepherd’s time and was inexpensive. By this means foot disord- ers were eradicated from the flock after having caused much trouble. In the trough was placed a simple lime white- wash, in which was sufficient blue vitriol to give SUMMER CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 185 it a blue color. This effectually prevented the spread of the disease and cured many cases in their incipiency. In no other business is it more true that ‘‘a stitch in time saves nine’’ than in the care of sheep. It is unfortunate that the average American shepherd sells out when foot disease strikes his flock when he can so easily control and erad- icate the disease. Troubles must come in all endeavors, so when one has been suffered and the remedy therefor found it is not a reason for abandonment of enterprise but the more reason for continuance, rather than to ‘‘fly to troubles we know not of.’’ ADVENT OF LATE LAMBS. There are situations where it is desirable that lambing should be delayed until grass comes. When forage and grain are scarce and the means not at hand to well nourish the ewe after lambing until grass comes, when indeed grass is the chief asset of the shepherd it is wise to time the lambing so that the lambs will come at about the same time as the grass. Indeed a lamb dropped then will make a far better growth than one dropped weeks earlier from a poorly-nour- ished ewe half starved by its mother because she cannot give it much milk before she herself has been fed. Nor will such a ewe respond in her milk flow to green grass as she would did her lamb come after grass has started anew in her veins a vigorous coursing of the vital fluid. It is most wise, however, to see to it that 186 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. these late lambing ewes are strengthened by some supplementary feeding before the lambs appear. 4 : 4 S. . * i= > ; ry ¢ 7 oe ; ¥ ° , « ; > . * a? 0 , : 4 - y 3 < x - wa 4 ry a ‘ ‘ ” { ¢ , - 4 iy i » * } ¢ ~ & ‘ . K, § aaa] . cy J * - ’ p . ; ad * ‘ = i . * 3. wat : ‘ 2 . . as ; 4 . - ‘ # Pt2 f ‘ 7 “) ; { ; ’ ‘ - y 2 ‘ - F; = » : 4 a " w i 4 » - ‘, 4, 4 . a7 ~ 5 , u " "4 - 7 ' eh ian 8 : ; ey x é "2 : , ’ ’ . \ c — - j . . : ~~ ’ s f > . \ ‘ 7 2 ‘ ' : - . i tL ale ‘ pt a { F FLOCK HUSBANDRY IN WESTERN STATES. 247 lambs. They will shear very heavy, but they are not of the best form. They have thin necks and drooping sharp shoulders and a look of meekness and depression. Shall we take them? In the next pen is a lot with evidence of mutton blood on the Merino. They are lighter fleeced, but stronger. As a rule the very heavily Hleeced sheep are not the best money-makers. They will not eat so well nor make so good gains. Nature specializes; the food goes to flesh or it goes to fleece and oil in the wool. And after a time thrown together, probably into a load of good feeders. It is only the exceedingly heavy fleece that is to be avoided. Now visit the lamb pens. The wethers have run very even and have required little assorting. The lambs are even also, but there is with them a few culls so that the buyer for the great packers usually reserves the right to discard 10, 20, 30, or maybe more of each lot. These are after a time thrown together probably into a load of feeders. The lambs are in character about what the wethers were, though they have suffered more in transit and are not so strong. Again we see the killers bidding high for the tops. Then goes up a sigh as you relinquish them, and you look on down the line. Ah! Here are the beauties! They are from Merino mothers, evidently, and their sires were Shrop- shires, or maybe Lincolns or Cotswolds and they are small and in rather thin flesh, so there is a chance. They have been born late and their tops have been selected and sold, these younger ones remaining. 248 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. If we get them we have done well. They will grow and fatten admirably and be our pride and joy all through the feeding season. When fat they will command the top price. If we buy them we will take 350 (which fills a ear) or maybe 700 or 1,050, and we may need to buy . some smaller lots to make the number come out even. But hold! Those lambs were after all priced pretty high, and here are some lively little fel- lows, not so well bred, quite, but yet giving evi- dence of good blood. They are very late and small, pretty thin, too, weighing less than 50 pounds. What of them? It depends upon what is stored at home in the barn. If there is abun- dance of good alfalfa, if there are silage and and perhaps roots, and loving care and generous shelter and long time, take them! They are the best. But if the feeding season must be short, if there is little clover or alfalfa, take the other lot. And here is yet another sort. They must have come from a terrible range where grief has been their constant portion. They are miserably thin and weak and were ill bred at the beginning. Their one redeeming feature is that they weigh little and will be sold for a very small price per pound. Shall we venture to buy them? That also depends upon the fur- nishings at home. Many of them may die be- fore they gain enough strength to enable them to go on and gain. They will require a long feeding period. But when they are fat they will sell for nearly as much as the best bred lambs FLOCK HUSBANDRY IN WESTERN STATES. 249 in the market. There is that peculiar side to the lamb trade: the ight lambs of part Mexican type when rightly fed sell well. So if we have the feed, the kindness and comforts at home, we may venture to take even these weaklings. But let us beware of them if we propose to ‘‘rough them’’ or to try to hasten them along by a short period of heavy feeding. Here is yet another opportunity. In these smaller pens are a lot of thin Natives, from some near-by state. They are big enough but their lack-luster eyes and sunken wool and gen- eral air of discouragement speak surely of an internal revenue department held under the rule of predatory parasite worms. If these lambs had been in health they would have been fat, in nine cases out of ten, and the killers would have taken them in. Avoid them un- less you understand treating them and eradi- eating the worms. Thin Western lambs do not often have these parasites because on their drier ranges the diseases do not lodge nor spread. And yet lambs from some of the more Eastern ranges, in the Dakotas, Nebraska and occasion- ally from Montana, come now and then infected. Before you buy these thin lambs look at their skins. If they are chalky pass them by. Here are ewes. This band of old ewes, in thin flesh, shows evidences of fairly good breed- ing. They have a motherly look too. We find that we can buy them cheaply. What can we do with them? Let us look first at their teeth. Ah, I thought so! A large number of them have lost their front 250 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. teeth. This means two or three things. It ac- counts for their being sent from range to mar- ket. They have been culled out because they no longer could subsist well on the tough grasses and herbage of the range. It accounts mainly for their emaciation And it means to you, ‘‘Am I in position to take good care of these old ewes?’’ These ewes may not be too old to make a good recovery under favorable conditions; they may even drop a strong crop of lambs and nourish them well, but they must eat more costly food than ewes that have ‘their teeth. They ought to have bran, oats, shelled corn and early-cut, tender hay. But they are for sale, and ata low price. If it is early enough so that we can breed them to good rams we may do this ; take them home and at once mate them with the best rams of Shropshire, Southdown, Hampshire, Dorset or whatever we fancy that we can get and then carry them along well, not forcing too much till after the lambs are born, and after that with judgment and discretion pouring into them all the good nourishing stuff that we can get them to consume. It will aston- ish us how those lambs will grow, and the beauty of them coming from these skinny old ewes but they may be soon sent off fat to market and the mothers will have gained all the time in flesh and in about two months’ more feeding will be ready to go after their lambs. This is good practice and only requires the right combina- tion of careful handling, with skill in feeding, warm, well ventilated barns and an assortment FLOCK HUSBANDRY IN WESTERN STATES. 251 of feeds with wise generosity in carrying it out to make the thing pay. In fact, this thing has been done. 100 ewes have been bought in Chi- cago for $175. They have dropped and raised IO lambs that sold at about 10 to 14 weeks’ of age for over $5.00 each. The ewes sheared, under this good care, above 7 pounds each and the wool sold for 25e. Then the ewes finally fattened and weighed 112 lbs., selling for 5c per pound. Thus the ewe that cost $1.75 in Chicago sold, with her wool and lamb, for $11.85 in late May. This was an exceptionally favorable result, however achieved by an assemblage of favor- ing conditions of low first cost, fairly good qual- ity, good sires, wise and generous treatment and a booming spring market. Let the indifferent shepherd, or the one having ear corn and tim- othy hay, beware of these broken-mouthed ewes; they will undo him every time. There is danger that these ewes may part of them be already with lamb to some inferior range ram. These lambs will not usually fat- ten off at an early age and may materially af- fect the result. Let us digress here to consider for a moment a proposition having in it great possibilities of profit for the feeder and offering to the rancher a ready means of disposing of his aging ewe stuff without too much sacrifice. The rancher may cull out his aged ewes before they have reached too decrepit a condition, discarding any that have spoiled udders or defective teats, and putting them on the best and tenderest grass he can find. Put with them good blocky mutton 252 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. rams as early as possible in summer. He ought to get a Down or Dorset ram for this pur- pose, since the long-wools do not get lambs fat- tening best at a very early age. Then he can sell the ewes, bred, to men who make a business of fattening winter lambs, and get.a great deal more for them than it has cost him to give them this treatment. The writer several years ago called the attention of sheep growers and feeders to the possibilities of this A SHOW OF COTSWOLDS. practice and it has already been begun in a small way with the probability that the prac- tice will become more common as the advantage becomes known, and especially as Western sheep ranching narrows down to a state of set- tled practice of good methods The age when a ewe should be discarded varies considerably with the breed and also with the district where she is kept and the manner FLOCK HUSBANDRY IN WESTERN STATES. 253 of keeping. In England among the Dorset breeders it is the custom to take three or four erops of lambs from a Dorset ram, then to breed them to a Down (Hampshire, Shropshire or Sussex), and sell them in lamb to go away to men who make it a practice to buy these ewes, grow from them one or two crops of lambs and send them fat to market. In America it can hardly be said that there is any established sys- tem anywhere, and the more usual method is simply to continue to use the ewe so long as her teeth are good, disposing of her then for what she will bring. There is something to be said for this practice, though undoubtedly when we have settled down to a good and regular system of management, when we have formed a habit of good management, we will turn off our ewes young enough so that they may be finished easily into prime mutton and will not have be- come ‘‘shelly.”?. The number of lambs that ean be taken from a ewe varies somewhat with the breed. Those that mature quickly the sooner lose their usefulness. Merinos taking long time to mature are sometimes productive for 16 years or more. Downs and Dorsets are usually past their usefulness at twelve years. In general it is good practice to discard ewes upon farms at about the age of six to eight vears. To return to our yards: there is a vast- ness about it and a bewilderment that appalls the man fresh from tranquil fields where a flock of 500 sheep seems large. On some single days there will be received at the big markets as many as 25,000, or even more, and in a single 254 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. brief forenoon most of them will be sold and many of them dispersed, some to the killers and some to the dipping vat and on cars again to go out to country feeders It is a confusing place to the countryman and he is wise to choose some skilled commission man to go with him and make his purchases, helping, too, in making selec- tions. It is not always wise for the feeder to go in person to the market, though he should make it a point to be there once or twice a year to study types and results of other men if possible The advantage in leaving the purchase alto- gether to an honest and capable commission man (there are such in most markets) is that the commission man may take advantage of heavy runs and depressed markets to secure for the feeder his supples at the lowest price. Naturally when the man goes himself to the market place he desires to make his purchase and get away whether conditions seem to him just right or not. His impatience may there- fore cost him dearly. It is a good plan to set a price that you are willing to pay for the class of sheep that you decide to feed and carefully describing your wishes state the case to your commission man, leaving the order with him to be filled when he ean. It may happen that you are too low and your bid may need to be raised, or the stuff may cost you less than you have expected to pay. ! The feeder may if he desires go in person to the ranges and make his selections there, bring- ing his purchases directly home. Thus he will FLOCK HUSBANDRY IN WESTERN STATES. 255 get the best and get them home fresher than did they le around in stock yards awaiting pur- chasers. The practical disadvantage of this, however, is that on the range the buyer must pay the rancher’s price; if the sheep go on to market he sets the price himself. It is especially desirable in buying on the | range that the purchaser should take care to weigh at least a portion of the stuff and make due allowance for shrinkage in shipment, else he may buy very dearly without being aware. In advising the feeder to beware of thin Na- tive feeders the writer is aware that he is pre- judicing his very subject and aim, the building up of flocks of Natives in all the regions east of the great ranges. It must be remembered, however, that in most of this region food is so abundant, both of grass aud grain, that almost any sheep in health will be fat when it goes to the market, and therefore snapped up eagerly by the killers, except those that are parasitic and therefore difficult to make fat. He hopes and believes that the day will come when this condition will be overcome and sheep will be found as healthy on farms as on ranges, but even then they will go fat to market instead of going to swell the supply of feeders. FEEDING OF LAMBS. Let us now take up in detail the work of lamb feeding, having by this time purchased our supply of feeders, or having grown them our- selves. Methods of lamb feeding vary widely | according to the district where they are fed. We will consider the several ways in detail. CHAP LE. Ix: WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. PEA FEEDING IN COLORADO. In the San Luis valley of Colorado a very eurious method of fattening lambs has within recent years grown to large proportions. This valley lays very high, so high indeed that alfalfa does not thrive as it does elsewhere in the irri- gated valleys of the West. But Nature evens up things and here is found the natural home of the field, or Canadian, pea. The soil and celi- mate seem admirably suited to the growth of peas. Indeed it is said that nowhere else in the world do peas thrive so well. The soil is some- what alkaline, full too of mineral riches, and the abundant irrigation and cool mountain air as- sure a good growth and a very heavy fruiting. The methods of culture are easy and simple; after being drilled into the soil and irrigated (sometimes with cultivation and sometimes without) they soon cover the ground and need no more attention. ‘The climate is so dry that the crop may stand sometimes without waste until it is consumed. The harvesting is simple in the extreme. Lambs are bought and turned (256) WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 257 in where they remain until the crop is harvested and the lambs are fat. There is no need of other forage than the dried pea vines give, nor of other grain than the peas. Gains on this ration are very large and the quality of mutton pro- duced unexeelled. The growth of this new in- dustry has been very rapid indeed, since prac- tically the first efforts were made in the winter of 1901-1902, when about 3,000 lambs were fed, and it is said that in the winter of 1904-1905 160,000 fat lambs left the San Luis and adja- eent valleys of Colorado. It is probable, too, that this is the beginning of the industry, for there are doubtless other valleys in Colorado high enough, cool enough and dry enough to grow peas well, and so of Utah, Idaho and Wy- oming. CANADIAN PEAS FOR LAMB FEEDING. The Canadian field pea is similar to the com- mon garden pea. It has no relationship to the southern cow pea. The Canadian pea thrives during cool and moist weather, it grows a large vine and sets freely with peas. All animals relish peas which are not only delicious to the taste but very nutritious. Peas are very rich in protein, having in fact about the same com- position as milk, minus the water. Peas are easily digested. Not all regions are adapted to the growth of the field pea. In the corn belt they thrive if they can be sown early enough, but then they must be promptly fed as a soiling crop or else cured into hay. Oats and peas mixed make a first rate soiling crop and have been much used. 258 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. Late sown peas in warm or dry regions have little value. The great pea regions are in Can- ada, in northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Min- nesota. In New England and northern New York, and now, more recently, in the high val- leys of the Rocky mountains. PEAS IN THE SAN LUIS VALLEY. The ‘‘Sunny San Luis’’ is a wide and fertile valley about 7,500 feet high in southern Colo- rado. It has a long, cold but dry and sunny winter, a spring lasting for most of the rest of the year. The nights are always cool in the San Luis. The valley is abundantly irrigated by a peculiar system. The soil is soaked by long continued furrow irrigation till the ‘‘sub”’ or underground water level rises nearly to the surface. Thus, even in a dry climate, there is moisture in abundance for the coolness and moisture loving peas. The San Luis valley was primarily devoted to wheat growing. Peas were first planted to rebuild the depleted soils. This they did, and incidentally in order to consume some of them and get rid of them sheep were turned in. The sheep thrive astonishingly. When lambs were put on the peas, they grew fat with astonish- ingly little care or expense. Now lambs feed- ing on peas is a large business in the San Luis valley each vear. The usual method is to grow the peas by sowing broadeast and letting them mature, turning in the lambs in the fall, sometimes as early as October, sometimes earlier. The lambs SHROPSHIRE FEEDERS IN COLORADO. WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 261 gather the peas from the vines and eat more or less of the forage. The fields are usually fenced and the lambs turned loose, from 500 to 2,000 in a. lot. At night they are usually eorralled to protect them from coyotes. When the weather remains dry there is no great waste of peas by feeding in this man- ner. With snow, however, there is danger that the forage will become greatly damaged and more or less of the peas lost. It is not an economical way to utilize peas at best because the lambs travel too much in gath- ering them and by their restlessness fail to put on flesh as they would were they confined to a small feed-lot. The advantage of feeding the peas where they grow is, however, two-fold. There is saved all the labor of harvesting them and the manure is seattered as it is made and thus the field is enriched. Where labor is scarce and dear as it often is in Colorado these are important considerations. There is another way that makes a fair com- promise between harvesting and feeding the peas in a yard and letting them le where they grow, that is to cut them with a mower and eock them up in rather large cocks, then let- ting the lambs run to them. It would seem that this was a good scheme, especially if the lambs have a shepherd with a dog so that they may be kept from running over the whole field at one time. There would be practically no waste in feeding by this plan, especially as pigs would follow the lambs and pick up what they left un- eaten. 262 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. Undoubtedly the greatest number of pounds of mutton could be gotten from an acre of peas by harvesting them and stacking them as alfal- fa is stacked, and feeding them in corrals as al- falfa fed lambs are fed. It would no doubt pay also to feed some supplementary grain in troughs, so as to let the lambs consume nearly all of the pea forage and still have grain enough to make the proportion of concentrates to roughness a just one. In this manner about twice as many lambs can be fattened from a field of peas as by the simple process of leav- ing the peas lie where they grow and the lambs to harvest them at will. AMOUNT OF LAMB MUTTON FROM AN ACRE OF PEAS. The pea feeding industry is yet in its infancy, and no one knows exactly what can be done with an acre of peas. Undoubtedly the greater num- ber of pea feeders fail to make the most of their opportunities because of poor methods. They let the peas damage by lying in the snow, or they over-stick and have not enough peas to finish their lambs, or they let the lambs run off in travel and lose flesh that should remain on their ribs. Peas gathered and fed in quiet should give about these results. An acre of peas may yield 30 bushels of shelled peas. Probably that is above the aver- age yield, yet it is not unusual for San Luis peas to exceed that. A bushel of peas weighs 64 Ibs. An acre of peas in the San Luis valley may yield 1,800 lbs. of shelled peas. This is doubt- WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 263 less above the average, but many surpass that vield. Peas are exceedingly digestible when fed whole to lambs so it is probable that 3, or at most 314 Ibs. of peas would make a pound of gain, if the forage was good and the conditions right. Thus an acre yielding 1,800 lbs. of peas should make from 500 to 600 Ibs. of mutton. While there is no doubt that some careful feeders, using some supplementary grain and feeding in corrals, will reach this high mark, yet at present under the easy method of turn- ing the lambs directly upon the peas, not more than 100 to 175 !bs. of lamb are secured, and about 100 Ibs. of pork from the pigs that follow the lambs. The death loss from feed- ing peas is said to be exceedingly light. The quality of the mutton so produced is very high. The peas also greatly enrich the ground on which they grow. The best method of feeding these peas would seem to include thought to put on them only good lambs and to put them on as early as the peas are nearly mature. There will always be a demand for good pea-fed lambs at a premium and the commoner sorts of lambs should be fed elsewhere. There are other re- gions where peas may be grown and fed with profit provided they are harvested and stacked. There are few places where the winter climate will permit feeding them on the ground where they grew as is done in the San Luis valley. But there are many high parks and mountain valleys in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and other western states where peas thrive ad- mirably and only the Winter’s snowfall pre- 264 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. vents their being fed as readily as in the San Luis valley. There is no better feed for old ewes, or for lambing ewes, than peas. The whole plant has a similar composition to milk, it rebuilds wasted tissue and creates new flesh. ALFALFA-FED COLORADO LAMBS. The front range of the Rockies sends forth a number of refreshing streams, creeks and riv- ers, from the Animas river at Trinidad up to the Arkansas in middle Colorado and the forks of the Platte at Fort Collins. Early in the settle- ment of Colorado it was learned that alfalfa grew wonderfully well on the plains, where, supplied with water by irrigation the difficulty seemed to be to use the alfalfa. Finally some man tried feeding it to sheep, then to lambs; grain was fed with it. A few ecar-loads of the lambs went to Eastern markets; the killers tried them and pronounced them extraordinarily good and the Colorado lamb industry was born. . Colorado lamb feeding has had its ups and downs. In the winter of 1898-1899 the feed- ers lost nearly all the hay they put into the lambs, getting back only the manure and pay for the corn bought in Nebraska. In other years they have made very large profits. At intervals they have tried feeding other things —calves, wethers, ewes to lamb—in the feed Jot. The wethers and calves are mostly elimi- nated now and lambs are fed on an ever-in- creasing scale. It is a settled industry, not without its risks yet as certain of profit as any feeding business can well be. WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 265 Colorado lambs are the product of Colorado alfalfa and Kansas and Nebraska corn. There is sometimes a little locally-grown wheat or barley fed, when it is cheap enough, but shelled eorn and alfalfa form probably 95 per cent of the foods used. In early days the Colorado feeders depended almost altogether upon the lambs of New Mex- ico and southern Colorado for a supply of feed- ers. The reputation of Fort Collins’ lambs was made first with these Mexicans. In more re- cent years lambs have come there from other regions, notably from Utah and Wyoming. The process of feeding lambs in Colorado is admir- ably simple. There are yards built of six-inch boards, with cracks between them wide enough to permit the lambs to thrust their heads in and eat between them. Hay is then piled along these fences right on the ground (which is usu- ally dry in that sunny clime) and the lambs eat it standing with their necks through the fence. Two or three times a day men go along and throw the hay up afresh. The hay is drawn from great ricks standing in the alfalfa mead- ows. Little of it is ever put in barns, which hardly exist in the sense that they are used in the Kast. Grain is fed in flat-bottomed troughs in the yards. There is often an arrangement of yards so that one may be used as a feeding yard for two or more pens. In that way the grain may be put in before the sheep are admitted. When the gates are opened they come in with a rush. When first the lambs are received they are 266 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. carefully dipped and then given, usually, a pre- paratory course of alfalfa feeding before hav- ing any grain. When they are introduced to corn it is fed in very smali amounts, slowly and steadily increased until finally they are eating about all they desire. That amount will be be- RACKS FOR FEEDING GRAIN. Photo from Wilcox, 1902 Year Book, Bureau Animal Indus.. U.S. Dept. Agr. tween two and three bushels per day to the hun- dred head. It is found best to feed corn in reg- ular rations two or three times a day rather than to use ‘‘self feeders,’’ such as are used in the Northwest for feeding light screenings. These self feeders, by the way, are merely bins having troughs at the lower edges on each side, WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 267 with narrow openings through which the screen- ings descend. Very few of the Colorado feed yards have sheds attached to shelter the lambs. Little rain falls and the snow is light and dry. Wind- breaks are found desirable. Water is pumped ‘BOX RACK FOR FEREDING ALFALFA. From Bulletin 31, Bureau Plant Industry, U.S. Depariment of Agriculture. by wind power and _ supplied abundantly in troughs, which are kept clean. Most of the Colorado lambs are sent to mar- ket with their fleeces on. The gains secured are excellent, lambs weighing 55 lbs. when put on feed often weighing 85 lbs. when ripe, and 268 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. better gains are sometimes secured. They come to the markets of Kansas City, Omaha and Chicago in solid train loads, and owing to their good quality and even ripeness they sell at the top of the market. There seems a distinct quality of goodness diffused through an alfalfa-fed lamb, and it is difficult to make as good on any other ration. The healthfulness of the diet is attested by the very great evenness of lots of alfalfa-fed lambs, though this is in part accounted for by the reg- ularity and moderation of the feeding There are other alfalfa feeding districts in Kansas and Nebraska where the business is earried on very much as in Colorado, having almost as good weather though not usually as good alfalfa. This is owing to the greater la- bility of rain falling on Nebraska and Kansas alfalfa and to the careless methods of hay- makers caused in part by scarcity of labor. Corn is plentiful in these feeding yards and is sometimes fed with greater freedom than in Colorado, though without corresponding in- erease in gain. The truth is that a lamb can not be forced as a pig can by feeding an excess of grain; he must make a large part of his growth from coarse forage and over feeding with grain is a dangerous proposition. Then there are regions where men attempt to fatten lambs with wild prairie hay or sor- ghum, with corn. Large, well-developed lambs will finish fairly well on such rations, though at considerably greater cost than when alfalfa is fed. WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 269 Prof. E. A. Burnett of the Nebraska Experi- ment Station has shown that, comparing alfal- fa hay and prairie hay with corn, the alfalfa-fed lambs made 52 per cent greater gains than the prairie hay-fed lambs. The addition of 16 per cent of oilmeal to the grain ration of the prai- rie hay-fed lambs increased their gain 26 per cent. The writer has often demonstrated in his own practice that lambs ean not be fed with much profit without a large amount of protein in the ration, and alfalfa or clover is the best and cheapest carrier of available protein. In Nebraska and elsewhere lambs are quite frequently turned directly into fields of stand- ing corn and permitted to do their own har- vesting. Sometimes rape is sown in the corn at time of last cultivation to add to their sup- ply of forage. Two to four pounds per acre of rape seed are sufficient It is better to let this Jast cultivation he fairly early so as to give the rape a start. Should the season prove show- ery the rape will come on and add greatly to the value of the feed. There are certain points to be observed in pasturing down corn with lambs. It is not a practice adapted to feeding very thin, light lambs, since they require too long a feeding sea- son. It is not a good practice in a wet re- gion, or on a soil readily tramped into mud and damaged thereby. Once the lambs are ac- customed to the corn they should not be taken away from it else they will on return overeat and die in consequence. Salt should be before them at all times. 270 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. The writer is of the opinion that the one valuable feature of this practice is the cheap- ness of its execution. There is certainly some waste, unless pigs follow the lambs, and in some instances at least there is a high death rate ow- ing to the impossibility of limiting the amount of corn eaten. However, as a usual thing the lambs learn slowly to eat the corn, finding it hard to shell, and do not founder. Mature sheep are sometimes turned into the cornfields to glean their own harvest. There is probably more danger of founder in old sheep than in lambs, since they the more read- ily begin to eat the ears. It may be said here that it is unsafe to turn Native sheep in the cornfields, as being accustomed to corn they will get too much of the grain, while their West- ern kindred will take more readily to the fod- der. In conclusion it may be said that the Western feeders have very great advantages in their cheap and abundant forage and grain and their mild, sunny climate They achieve success by close attention to details; the lambs are fed with very great regularity as to time and amount. One man will feed 2,500 or more, so the labor cost is hght. Their disadvantage is in their remoteness from market, entailing higher freights, and in the speculative character of the Western men which leads many of them to jump from one industry to another, feeding few lambs one year and very many the next, jumping often just at the right time to fail to alight on their feet. WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. re It is a curious fact that in Nebraska and Kansas few farmers feed their own grain and hay, preferring to sell it to great operators who feed in central! plants many thousands of sheep and lambs. Thus is the manure lost to the farms that will some day need it, and mountains of richness are heaped up outside of feeding cor- rals to prove an embarrassment to the owner. This system is wrong and invites disaster. The man who produces the food should feed it at home. A man ean afford to devote his time to )00 sheep or lambs in winter; thus he has left on the farm most of the fertility taken from it in erops and can readily return it to his fields. Feeding his own crops he runs small risk of loss in his operations FEEDING MILL SCREENINGS. Minnesota is the great state at present for feeding screenings. These screenings come from the great mil!s along the upper Muissis- sippl1 and elsewhere. They contain a little shrunken wheat, a good deal of weed seed, largely of pigeon grass, and bits of straw and trash. There are many thousands of tons of screenings available every year. Most of this material is used by the large sands of tons of screenings available every vear. Most of this material is used by the large operators, who feed from a few to many thou- sands. They generally use sheds provided with self-feeding bins holding many bushels of screenings. The management of one of their aie SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. plants is admirably simple; the lambs are bought, usually of a fairly good size and qual- ity, dipped and turned into the sheds, where they remain until fat. Usually no hay is fed or re- quired, the bulky nature of the screenings ren- dering them all sufficient for distending the lamb properly. At one time large profits ensued from feeding lambs on screenings. The millers, curiously enough, became aware of this fact and began steadily to raise the price of screenings. As lamb prices advanced so did screenings, till at this writing the margin is not large and a bad year would wipe it out altogether. SHEEP FEEDING IN THE CORN BELT. In the corn belt proper the conditions for feeding are good generally so far as abundance of food is concerned. Corn is a staple and must find a market. Hay is readily grown, and late experience has shown that wherever there is limestone soil, or sweet and fertile soil, alfalfa may be grown. Red clover is usually easily grown. Thus there is a ready source of food for sheep. The climate is another matter. Sheep want dry footing and dry coats. They can not en- dure muddy yards and wet dripping skies. Therefore before we attempt to feed lambs we must provide a somewhat artificial climate. This is done with shingles to turn off the wet. Mature sheep are very often fattened altogeth- er in open yards and Western Merinos have WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. Dis fleeces that turn rain fairly well, but lambs in the exposure do not thrive and it is folly to at- tempt feeding them east of the Missouri river without some shelter from rain. North of IIli- nois, however, where rains are infrequent and CROSS-SECTION OF MODEL SHEEP BARN, SHOWING FRAME. snows light and dry, sheds are sometimes dis- pensed with, but that is really outside the corn belt. The character of the barn or shed used is 274 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. not essential. It may be a simple roof open on two or three sides, to which hay will be hauled on wagons from ricks. The writer has such a feeding plant and uses it to good advantage. It may better be a barn of two stories, the upper one stored with alfalfa or clover hay. On the lower or ground floor the lambs are fed. Their part should be eight feet high in the clear, all in =n SIDE VIEW OF MODEL SHEEP BARN, SHOWING DOORS. one large room, which may be divided as de- sired by use of racks or movable panels. Through this room there should be oppor- tunity to drive transversely through nearly or quite every bent or space between posts. To accomplish this doors must constitute the whole length, preferably on the north and south sides of the building, which may well stand east and west. WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 275 Thus the two sides will be composed entirely of doors so far as the lower story is concerned. Doors cost little more than ordinary siding to construct. These doors should be divided trans- versely at a height of about four feet. The lower half will swing from the post just as a gate swings, while the upper half will be hinged at the upper side, and raise up outwardly. Thus the lower part of the door may remain closed to restrain the sheep, while the upper half is lifted to admit air and light. And air may be admit- ted and storms kept out, the outward swing of the upper door throwing drip of rain away. These upper doors will in mild weather be raised high and left up. In time of storm or extreme cold they may be closed on one side or the other. | An abundance of fresh air is absolutely nec- essary to the lamb. He will not thrive or fat- ten well without it. He will thrive better in the open field than in a close foul-smelling, un- ventilated barn or shed. Nor does it matter much after being once on feed whether the lamb barn is warm or cold. In truth the lambs often thrive better to have it moderately cold. It is not necessary or best to have it warm enough so that water will not freeze within. If the user is uncertain whether he will remember to open these upper doors he had better not hang them at all, but leave the space open instead. The cold and snow that will blow in will do less injury to the fattening lambs than the deprivation of air would do. The barn should have no floor save the nat- 276 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. ural earth. Water troughs of concrete are best and they may be built so as to be half within and half outside of the barn, on the sunny side. These tanks may be of large size, thus obviat- ing the necessity of storage tanks, say 10x12 feet and about 18 inches deep. It is of no use to make a lamb’s drinking trough very deep, and in fact there is danger that they may drown in a deep tank, since they will sometimes jump into it. The amount of room desirable in a feeding barn is about 5 square feet to a lamb aside from the racks. In practice one will need about 8 square feet gross, which will give him room for his racks. To feed, then, a carload or 350 lambs, he needs a barn about 36x72 feet. Some feeders crowd the lambs more than that but they will not thrive as they ought nor ripen evenly unless all have room so that they may eat at the same time. The next thing is the feed rack. Various types are in use and all have some good quali- ties. After much experience with various types the writer finds this form best (see illustration). It is made of two 1x6” boards spaced 24 inches apart, with ends and a bottom of matched pine flooring. This makes a shallow box or feed trough. At the corners are legs of 2x2 inch stuff, 40 inches high. The vertical slats are of 14-inch stuff 3 inches wide and are spaced 614 inches apart. The top of the box should be about 12 inches high. In this rack may be fed any sort of grain or forage. The wide’ openings between the slats permit sheep to WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. a thrust their heads clear in and there they will stand quietly eating until they have consumed the ration with little waste, whereas if the vertical slats are placed close together the lambs will pull the hay out, dropping it be- neath their feet. This is a cheap form of rack, durable, easily made and as effective as any. The length should be to fit well with the type of barn used, so that rows of these racks will, when required, make divisions or fit between the posts of the basement. Now, with the feed racks in place, with wa- ter, and the mow above stored with clover or al- TWO VIEWS OF FEED-RACK. falfa hay, which should have been early cut, we are ready for the lambs. First a word about the yard. It should have in it about one half greater capacity than the roof covers, not more, and if it can be sloping all the better. It should be well graveled with rather coarse gravel, spread smoothly. If it ean be concreted all the better, since it will then be very easily kept clean. The reason for having a small yard is so that it may the more readily be kept dry and clean, and because in a large yard there is too much 278 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. waste of manure. Lambs in the fattening pen do not need much exercise and are the better not to have it. A word, teo, about hay. With timothy hay in the mow no attempt should be made to fatten lambs. Oat straw is as good, or as bad. Bright shredded corn stover is a little better, and when fed in connection with abundant wheat bran and a little oilmeal it will serve very well. Without.this extra supply of pro- tein shredded corn stover will not profitably fatten lambs. Now let us bring the lambs home. They come from the cars half famished, though there are seldom any dead ones among them. What a sight it is to see them devouring the grass along the roadside as they go from the station to the farm! It is impossible to hurry them, nor should one attempt it; let them take their time. When they reach the farm we will turn them first into some grass pasture where there is wa- ter and there they may rest for two days, sup- posing it to be vet fair and dry weather. Then they must be dipped, unless we are willing to ac- cept the dipping at the yards. And at once they go to their pens and are initiated into the mys- teries of barn life. We will put about 500 ina pen or what the barn holds. The writer feeds 700 in one barn, which seems not to be too many for all to thrive. There must be racks enough so that all the lambs may find places to eat at the same time. We fill the racks moderately full of alfalfa hay and watch the lambs eat it. At first they WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 279 are timid about going into the barn, but soon they find their way about and learn where the food is. And then how they do eat! We will feed them twice a day, at the same time each day, and let them rest. The water we must watch, that it is kept pure enough for man to drink and always in supply. Salt we will give at first by dissolving it in water and sprinkling it over the hay; it may be put on the coarse stems that they leave. After doing this for a few days we will find their appetite for salt satisfied ; then we will fill a box with salt in one corner of the barn and let them have access to it at their own will. But if we could take time and trouble to put brine on their hay all through tne feeding season that would be the better way, making them eat the coarser parts with relish and avoiding all danger from getting too much salt. There is, however, little danger of that if the lambs are first carefully introduced to it until their appetite is appeased, then given ac- cess to it at all times. On Woodland Farm it is the custom to roll salt barrels into the barn and saw out two or three staves, letting the sheep consume it.as their appetite indicates they should. But when the writer fed his lambs in person he preferred the brining method. We will feed no grain at all for the first two weeks, unless the lambs chance to be unusually vigorous and therefore able to take it sooner. It is wise to let the lambs get their strength be- fore attempting to feed them grain, to which they are not accustomed. In some cases the lambs will be so weak 280 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. when they have found their journey’s end that it will be wise to strengthen them by feeding a little wheat bran in connection with the clover or alfalfa hay. There is scarcely anything more readily digested and strengthening than wheat bran and it seems especially suited to the needs of the lamb. In truth, the one reason why the writer is not using it and advocating it, is its heavy cost, now that the dairymen have learned that they must have it. In former years, before they had much alfal- fa hay and when bran was far cheaper than now, the writer and his brothers fed many tons of it to lambs with very gratifying results. They made it profitable to feed it, though later when they had abandoned it for alfalfa hay produced on their own farm, the profits of lamb feeding were greatly increased. The cost of growing lamb mutton in the days when timothy hay, oat straw and shredded corn stover were used in connection with wheat bran and oilmeal for the ration, with corn, was about $6.25 per hundred pounds. Afterward, when the only feeds used were alfalfa hay and ear corn, the cost dropped to $3.50 per hun- dred. There are troubles that come to weak West- ern lambs upon their first introduction to the Eastern feed lot. Sometimes they develop sore mouths in a very contagious form. The rem- edy is to rub off the seabs with a corn cob and cover the sore places with a little undiluted coal tar sheep dip. This remedies the disorder in short order. It is wise to take it in hand early. FEEDING CORRAL, WITH ZIGZAG FENCE. Photo from Wilcox, 1902 Year Book, Bureau Animal Industry, U.S. Department of Agriculture. ote a —— rr. he WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 283 Sometimes, if the yards are a bit muddy, sore feet develop. These ought to be promptly treated, either with blue vitriol or butter of an- timony and the yard made dry. Air-slaked, dry lime scattered where they will get it on their feet will help. Now we have the lambs used to their new home and fed up on alfalfa until they are strong again; we are ready to introduce them to grain feeding. It is a good practice to turn them out of doors while we put in feed for them, leaving them out until the racks are all filled. If oats are plentiful and cheap enough we can give the first grain food of oats, mixed with bran. There is nothing better than this. Seatter the grain very thinly along the bottoms of the racks, having first cleaned them out well. A quart to a rack will be an abundance, less will be better. Put the hay in after the grain, loosely. Be eareful with nice bright early-cut clover and alfalfa not to feed too much; they will waste it. They may as well eat it up almost clean. Let the lambs come in. Throw open several wide doors at one time so that they will not erowd. Little by little they will learn the taste of the grain. Do not increase the amount fed until vou feel certain that most of them are seeking it. Then let your increase be very grad- ual. Corn, in the cornbelt, must be the main part of the fattening ration. Now to introduce that. Take ear corn, if it is at hand, and chop the ears up with a hatchet into nubbins about an 284 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. inch long. Strew a few of these nubbins in each rack. Next feeding time strew in a few more. Increase very, very slowly as they learn to eat the corn, till you are giving them several ears to a rack. Cut the bits longer and longer, till at last you are merely making two pieces of an ear. Finally stop breaking ears at all, and feed them whole. You should be about 45 days in getting them on to what is practically a full feed of corn. And then do not give them all they want, but give them nearly all. If when on full feed they are eating as much as they desire within a very few grains you have done well. Be sure they clean it all up at every feed and come eagerly for more at the next feeding time. Now when they have gotten to eating corn well you may as well drop the bran and oats, merely because of the expense of feeding them, since oats are usually dear. If they are cheap enough continue to feed them, and so of barley, in con- nection with corn; they form an admirable ra- tion. If a portion of the hay must be prairie hay, oat hay or timothy, in fact any grass not a clover, you can not discard bran, since there is too little protein in the grasses to make the lambs grow. They need to make a lot of flesh and bone, too, besides the fat. If you have them to spare feed a small amount of soy beans in connection with corn. Soys are rich in proteim, some varieties having above 35 per cent. And the soy straw, if it has not been wet, is relished though too coarse to be eaten clean. Oilmeal WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 285 in connection with bran, where grasses or corn stover form the hay, works admirably. There is more clean profit, however, in feed- ing the simple ration of alfalfa hay and ear corn and nothing else, unless corn silage. No feed will make better or more marketable lambs. Once on full feed the programme should be an unvarying one. At some regular time in the morning, not too early, say half an hour after sunrise, the lambs should have their morning feed. The water should be looked after and the lambs allowed peacefully to consume their allowanee. Shortly after noon they will lie down to rest and sleep. Do not ever disturb them; assimilation takes place best when they are asleep. Try to feed hay with judgment, so that they eat it nearly all and yet have enough. At about four in the afternoon begin feeding again. Later will serve, so you observe the same time each day. Feed just as you did in the morning. One hundred lambs will eat about 214 bush- els of corn daily when on full feed, unless they are very small lambs. A thousand lambs will eat more than a ton of hay daily. It will take about 21 bushels of corn to fatten a lamb and 12 to 20 tons of hay to the hundred lambs, de- pending on how long they are kept. Soon the stems of hay will accumulate in the barn and make a good bed. The corn should be cut and the stalks fed in the open yard, which will thus be kept dry and clean. The blades of the corn will be pulled off and eaten and the hay thus helped out. 286 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. Soon the manure spreader must be started taking out the accumulating manure from the shed. Every day a few loads may be hauled away and spread on the frozen ground; thus there is avoided the accumulation of a vast amount of manure to be cleared away at one SHEEP WAGONS. Photo from Wilcox, Annual Report B. A. I. 1902, U. S. Dept. of Agr. time in spring when every sort of work is crowding. Late in March the lambs may be shorn, if they have not already gone to market, and the feeding continued for a little time thereafter. When they are ripe they should go to market, otherwise losses are likely to follow, not from WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 287 disease but from disorders favored by too plethoric a condition. With small lambs it requires at least 120 days to ripen. With larger and more fleshy ones less time is required. With very small ~ lambs in thin flesh 180 days are none too many to induce ripeness. The latter part of the feed- ing period gives the most profit, since gains are better than at the beginning when the lambs were unused to feed. It is cheaper to ship the lambs to market clipped, since many more can ride in a ear and the freight is no more. When the lambs are uneven in size it is likely that some will ripen before the rest. In this ease a carload may often be sent on and the rest allowed to ripen further. The writer has sometimes made lambs fed in this manner gain nearly 100 per cent in weight. It is a pleasant business and in the long run profitable. Sometimes a year will come when the price of feeders is too high in proportion to the selling price of lambs and one must fig- ure on the value of the manure to find his profit. In recent yeays the writer has varied the treatment outlined by feeding corn silage in connection with ear corn and alfalfa hay. This silage is made from well matured corn, so that it makes a sweet silage, containing little acid and having in it no mould. Lambs eat this greedily and seem to grow much more rapidly than when it is withheld. About 21% to 3 pounds of silage makes a ration for a day to a 288 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. lamb. The writer believes this cheapens the ra- tion materially and perhaps the mutton is bet- ter; he thinks it is and has had no difficulty in securing the top price for his alfalfa-silage- eorn-fed lambs. When corn is made into silage after it is well matured there is of course a very large proportion of grain thereon and it is tender and succulent and much relished by the lambs. The small amount of acid in the silage is lactic acid, promotive of digestion. Silage has been fed to breeding ewes with ex- eeilent results when it was of good quality and fed judiciously. When it has been acid, or when in immoderate amounts, disaster has followed its use. In some instances that have come under the writer’s observation great losses have come from attempting to feed silage exclusively to breeding ewes. They did well for a time, then went swiftly to ruin, much of it irretrievable. Loss has also come from feeding acid silage. A silo should not be built with cemented, water-tight floor. On such a floor the silage becomes very acid and trouble follows when it is fed to sheep. The natural earth makes the best floor fer a silo. Never with sheep should sMage form more than half the ration. If this rule is observed and the silage is made from well matured corn, planted no thicker than for the regular crop, it is believed that none but good results will ever follow its use. Lambs will not consume quite all the coarser parts of the silage. These must be thrown un- WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 289 der foot or cleaned out and fed to cows. The writer has seen great loss from feeding the re- fused portions of silage to horses. In one in- stance where quite a heap of it had accumu- lated in the barnyard eleven horses and mules ate of it. Eleven of them died. There is evi- dently some principle developd in silage after it has been exposed to the air, perhaps, that is most unfavorable to horses. They die with symptoms resembling spinal meningitis. There will be death loss among feeding lambs no mat- ter how carefully they are fed. Care will greatly reduce this loss, however. The writer has had as low as 2 per cent and as high as 8 per cent. If no more than 4 per cent of loss is sustained no one need shed tears. Attention to regularity in feeding, care that no doors or gates are left open to admit lambs to feed bins, and always feeding well under the gauge of the appetite will usually keep the death loss very low. With Western lambs there is sometimes danger of their jumping into water tanks if they have access thereto. The feeder should be careful that no sudden fright causes them to stampede in the barn and pile up, which may smother a number. There is seldom any good accomplished by treating with medicine sick lambs in the feed lot, unless for stomach worms. These should be cleaned out before the feeding begins. The writer has probably lost his full share of lambs and has tried various remedial treatments, but is not aware that he ever helped one. Death, in fact, usually comes from some inflammation 290 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. of the intestinal tract, caused by engorgement of rich food, and medicine only aggravates the trouble. There will occasionally be loss from gid, or turnsick, which is caused by a bladder worm parasite in the brain. There is no practical remedy for this, though the lamb when first observed will make good mutton. With regular, rational treatment the lambs will keep in health and when occasionally one dies the owner must console himself by thinking of the 99 well ones, meantime taking off the pelt, salting it well and feeding the fresh car- cass to his pigs or chickens. The writer does not believe it necessary for lambs to be out in their yards during day or night, so the barn or shed is as thoroughly aired as he has directed. When they are confined their urine is saved and the value of the manure greatly increased. Rich green fields spring up as by magic about the lamb feeding plant and when off years come and little direct money profit is seen the feeder can console himself if he has husbanded wisely his stores of manure by seeing the corn reaching toward heaven and flaunting its banners of deepest, darkest green, while following the corn are fine meadows of alfalfa or clover. When lambs are fed long, until after green grass comes in spring, it is a temptation to turn them out to graze for a time. This is a mis- taken practice, sure to result in great loss. The lambs will not continue to gain on grass, even though fed their grain as usual, at least there WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 291 will be a period of reaction when they will actu- ally lose flesh, though if the practice be con- tinued long enough they will gain it back again. It is more profitable to send them to market right from their dry lot. Sometimes, however, lambs are bought in the spring with the expectation of feeding them off on grass, with corn. This may prove a satis- factory enterprise, if it is carefully managed. The troughs should be placed in a yard or tem- porary corral in the pasture and when grain is put in them the entire flock must be called or driven within and fastened there for a sufficient time for them to consume their ration. They may then be loosened and permitted to roam where they will until the next feeding time arrives. The feeder must see to it that every lamb comes up every time. Otherwise he will have cases of indigestion and founder; many will get off their feed. Sometimes self-feeders are used on pasture. They seldom result well, owing to the essen- tially short memory and weak original impulse of the lamb. He will not leave his fellows to go for feed when he is hungry, and when he does reach the feeder he is apt to gorge himself thereafter declining to eat at all. USE OF SELF-FEEDERS. The writer has used self-feeders in past years in his feeding barns and discarded them en- tively. Various tests have shown that not only 292 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. is the death loss much heavier where self-feed- ers are used for corn but the cost of gains is also much greater. If bran is fed it may be fed in a self-feeder, though of course this requires the use of considerable bran, and lhght screen- ings are well enough fed in that manner, but for corn, barley or wheat, troughs and regular ra- tions are safer and better. FEEDING BEET PULP. Nearness to sugar factories gives oppor- tunity to utilize the waste product called beet pulp. ‘This pulp is an excellent food but con- tains 90 per cent of water. Therefore like si- lage, it is not well to feed it without dry grain being added to the ration, as well as dry forage. A ton of pulp contains about the same feeding value as 200 lbs. of corn. This would indicate what the farmer can afford to pay for pulp, a very small amount indeed when he must count the cost of hauling and feeding. It is doubtless a healthful addition to the ration but experi- ments show that pulp alone with alfalfa hay does not make as good lambs as corn and al- falfa. There is Jittle bone material in beet pulp, therefore lambs fed on it are said to suffer that lack. It would seem, however, that alfalfa would make good this deficiency. The prac- tical objection to feeding beet pulp in cold weather is its freezing, or its lability to make the yards damp The quality of meat from these pulp-fed A TEXAS FEEDING YARD. WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 295 lambs is very good, though they do not stand shipment so well as the corn-fed lambs. CAUSES OF DEATH IN THE FEED-LOT. Lambs born east of the Missouri river are often infested with stomach worms. In buying them in the fall to put on feed only the thin ones can be secured, and these are almost cer- tainly infested. These lambs will die rapidly in the feed lot unless they are thoroughly treated to eradicate the worms. Lambs free from parasites should not die. When they do it is because of some mistake in their management, or some accident. The heaviest losses that ever occurred to the writer came from feeding a large amount of oat hay, not well cured, and on which had been put too much salt in an effort to keep it from mould- ing. Very many lambs die from affections of the bladder causing retention of urine, or ‘‘ wa- ter belly.’’ There is some evidence that the too free use of oat hay will cause this. Many lambs are lost from indigestion caused by feeding too much grain, or by introducing them too suddenly to grain. Seventy-five per eent of all the lambs dying in the feed lot die from indigestion caused by over-eating of grain. In investigating the causes of death losses the writer has found these significant illustra- tions. One man fed his lambs in the sheds, feeding corn, clover hay and corn silage. He did not feed too much grain, but he did not turn the lambs out when he fed them. Thus some of the lambs began eating sooner than the others 296 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. and naturally ate too much. Another man had heavy losses because his lambs had not enough good hay and too much mouldy ensilage. Had they had a sufficiency of hay it is doubtful if they would have eaten the mouldy portions of the silage. It is not well to feed mouldy silage to any animals. We have lost lambs through the carelessness of feeders in leaving the gran- ary door open. We have lost lambs from an awkward arrangement of our sheds, having an L with a long and narrow extension. This pre- vented perfect distribution of the lambs. Some- thing frightened the lambs from the L, maybe a house cat, or a rat or barn fowl, and they fled to the main part of the shed soon after they were turned to their feed. A few ventured and ate too much corn. They died. The writer has had a death loss of less than 1 per cent, and as high as 6 per cent. No one need feel dis- heartened at a loss of three per cent between purchase and sale. To absolutely prevent loss it is quite neces- sary to start with healthy lambs; to rest them and begin by feeding very moderately, using good clover or alfalfa hay as the basis of their ration and to introduce them to corn very slowly and gradually; to increase the ration so slowly that they will be unaware of the change —to feed always with perfect regularity and always a little less grain than they will con- sume and to give attention to very thorough ventilation and the supply of pure water. The salt supply should be always conveniently avail- able. Nothing should ever frighten the lambs. WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 297 Stampeding them will often cause death. When lambs are lying down they should never be dis- turbed. They fatten most while reclining and asleep. PEAS FOR LAMBS. In some regions where the Canada field peas thrive, or near the factories where split peas are prepared, peas or pea refuse is available for lamb feeding. There is nothing better. Lambs grow, thrive and fatten admirably on this food. With peas for the grain ration it is not so ma- terial that alfalfa be fed, since peas are exceed- ingly rich in protein. THE BUSINESS OF LAMB FEEDING. The writer thinks it unnecessary to ask pardon for thus devoting so many pages to the description of the lamb feeding industry, based on Western lambs, corn and alfalfa. It is easy to see from the immensity of the ranges and the constant supply of lambs coming from them, together with the great and ever- increasing demand for lamb mutton in the United States, that this industry is one not destined to soon diminish in importance. Old sheep are fed in relatively decreasing numbers and the demand for strictly ‘‘baby lambs’’ is absorbing a greater and greater proportion of the farm-grown lambs. Lamb feeding as a speculation may result disastrously, indeed is certain to do so at times when feeders are bought dear, feeds are high in price and lambs sell cheaply in spring: but the farmer who fits 298 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. himself for the business and feeds with care and steadiness year by year will find his profits encouraging and his farm increasing steadily in productiveness. The work is such that farm labor finds employment the year ’round, thus good men are attracted to lamb-feeding farms. FEEDING OF OLDER SHEEP. After the lamb comes the yearling in point of merit as a feeder. Very often the yearling was a light lamb, too hight the owner thought to put upon the market in the fall. In the feed lot year- lings thrive. They do not always have perfect front teeth and are therefore less able to eat ear corn. If bought ight enough their gain is very good. ‘They may be fed best in just the way de- scribed for feeding lambs and their treatment need vary in no particular save one. Should there be any ewes among these yearlings the feeder must be very careful that they do not get access in any way to the ram, or that there be no rams among the lot when bought. Ewes in the feed lot will not very often drop living lambs. If they are sent to market. be- fore lambing, supposing they show strong signs of pregnancy, they are subject to dockage and may possibly be thrown out by the inspectors. FEEDING MATURE WETHERS. There are advantages in feeding wethers that lambs do not possess. They are big and strong and hardy. They do not die so easily. They do not need shelter so much as the lambs need it. They will thrive quite well on corn and corn WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 299 stover with little hay. They are adapted to a ruder, rougher style of sheep husbandry than the lambs. There are, however, some few essentials to successful wether feeding. First and most im- portant is to buy the right class and to buy them cheap enough. With the lamb one can afford bet- ter to pay too much, since the gain in weight may be so great that the excess of cost may be offset by the good gain in pounds and profitable price for it. With mature sheep much smaller gains ean be had and if there is not a material ad- vance in selling price over cost loss is apt to follow. In lamb feeding there is often more profit in buying small, immature lambs. With wethers, on the other hand, the bigger and better ma- tured they are the better the chances presum- ably are for profits in feeding them—that 1s, if they have been bought low enough so that the selling price will be materially better. There is thus the advanced gain on the first cost besides the pay for what weight is put on. Opinions differ as to what advance in price the feeder of mature sheep must have in order to make a profit. Certainly it depends much upon the sell- ing price; if that is high there is need of less margin than if it is low. In general there should be a rise of a dollar per hundred to make feeding of mature sheep profitable. This also depends much upon the price of wool. When wool sells as high as 25 to 30 cents per pound the profit of feeding mature sheep is naturally much greater than when wool is low. Then also 300 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. one can afford to feed the heavy shearing types, which do not naturally make so good gains in weight as do the more open wooled and light shearing sorts. In feeding sheep there is need for much less protein in the ration than when lambs are fed. A PAIR OF HAMPSHIRE LAMBS. The reason is plain: the mature sheep has its frame already built; has nearly as much mus- cular structure as it will ever have. It has been demonstrated that feeding does not ma- terially add to the fiesh of the animal, unless perhaps in case of considerable emaciation, but puts on fat instead, either intruding it between WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 801 the muscles, or, what is usual with the sheep, depositing it in masses partly upon the inside and partly distributed over the body. The lamb, as has been noted, has its frame- work yet to build, therefore it needs and must have abundant protein, thence its thrift when AT A ROYAL ENGLISH SHOW. fed such protein-carrying foods as wheat bran, oilmeal, soy beans and alfalfa or clover hay. Corn, (maize) is preeminently the best food- stuff for fattening sheep. It may be fed in very economical manner. In Ohio it is the practice to cut the corn when ripe, gathering it into large shocks containing from 144 to 256 hills. These shocks tightly bound about the tops keep out 302 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. the weather and preserve the ears and blades very well. From the field the shocks are drawn direct to the feed yard, or to some large, dry feeding field, where the unhusked corn is strewn thinly’ over the ground. Here the sheep consume the ears with little or no waste, trim- ming off the blades also. If this practice of feeding shock corn is now supplemented by sup- plying racks filled with clover or alfalfa hay the sheep are as well provided for as need be. Sheep consume more food than steers, weight for weight of animals being compared and also make slightly greater gains for food consumed. In general sheep will consume about one-fourth more than steers. There would thus seem to be considerable ad- vantage in feeding sheep over feeding cattle, when gains are considered and also fleeces se- cured, were it not that death losses are higher among sheep and also prices fluctuate consid- erably, sometimes feeders being relatively high in the fall and ripe sheep low in the spring. The correct management of the sheep feeding yard is simple. There should be provided wind breaks. It is an old saying that ‘‘the pig an see the wind’’ and the sheep can certainly feel it through its thick coat. Sometimes these windbreaks are formed by long sheds, some- times by high fences, made tight, and sometimes they are of natural timber and brush. Some of the best sheep the writer has ever seen fed were fed in the old fashioned way on shock corn, in a blue-grass pasture that had been allowed to grow up very high and thick, and where open WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 303 glades were interspersed with thickets of hazel, oak and hickory. In this primitive solitude the sheep found shelter and sustenance, feeding on shock corn strewn in the open places where the wind could not reach them. Water must be abundant and good and very accessible. Sheep will not thrive if they must go far for their drink. It is a good plan to provide wide, flat-bot- tomed troughs in which may be fed husked ear corn, since it will not all the season be prac- ticable to feed shock corn. If the sheep have their teeth they will shell the ear corn so read- ily that it is not worth while shelling it for them. The hay racks are best in shelter of sheds so that the hay cannot become wet with rains. And if there is room so that all can be sheltered from soaking storms all the better. Dry cold and snow will not hurt but wet is a serious set- back. Many sheep feeders rely upon self-feeders for shelled corn for the finishing of the sheep. These are usually large bins, holding 20 to 100 bushels each, with troughs on either side into which the corn descends slowly. There seems less objection to the use of the self-feeder for mature sheep than for lambs. The writer be- leves, however, that the greater profit comes from regular feeding in troughs of rations a little under the appetites of the sheep. A better and safer self-feeder is the self feed- ing corn crib. This is built with a capacity of hundreds or thousands of bushels, with a large trough at the side into which corn descends. 304 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. Sheep shell this corn at their will and the cobs are thrown out as they gather. Sheep ought to gain on feed from one to four pounds per week, depending on their condition and the stage of feeding. The gains are most rapid just before approaching ripeness. Death losses in feeding mature sheep should be slightly less than in feeding lambs. Natur- ally gains are less since there is not opportunity for much growth along with fattening. The writer once made a gain of 45 lbs. with lambs in the barn while his wethers outside, very well fed, gained 20 lbs. The wethers consumed more eorn than the lambs but had no wheat bran which the lambs received. Sheep will consume better than lambs vari- ous coarse fodders. Soy bean straw they relish, if it is not weather damaged, and bean and pea straw. When only a maintenance ration is fed it may consist largely of these fodders, with a trifle of grain to keep up the weight. While in the regions west of the Missouri sheep feeding is carried on in this rather primi- tive fashion, in Michigan and Ohio it has pro- gressed further toward a right solution of the problem. The writer has a neighbor who has fed sheep for many years. This neighbor, Chas. Bales of Madison Co., Ohio, formerly fed in open yards protected only by high fences. In these yards he fed with shock corn, using self feeders toward the latter part of the period. He was able to get a gain of about 30 pounds, using the best class of Montana feeders. Later he built barns and sheds in which he LINCOLNS IN THE SHOW-RING. ee aS ae ae ate Ae sn eI ye A IE al, the rm eee a A: : 4 , ay iP md hot ke ae WESTERN LAMB FEEDING. 307 fed clover and alfalfa hay. Continuing his grain feeding in much the same manner he was able to increase his average gain so that 1,000 sheep weighing when they went into the yard 110 lbs. average increased to a weight of 156 lbs. besides shearing a fleece of 10 pounds. At the same time he cut down his death losses to 2 sheep from 1,200 one year and again to 6 from 1,200. He attributes the lighter losses to the fact of the sheep being more comfortable, thus eating with more regularity, and not injuring their digestions by sudden overloading with grain. He now believes that the self-feeders should be under cover and only the shock corn fed in yards. This man makes a practice of saving the late summer growth of blue-grass on large pastures, on which the sheep are turned in October or November. On these pastures they remain un- til Christmas or sometimes till February if the season is suitable, having also racks filled with clover or alfalfa hay. They then go to the yards for the final feeding, going to market, shorn, in May. He believes that the secret of success in feed- ing wethers is to buy the best, using those with a Cotswold or Lincoln cross if obtainable, and to keep them stuffed at all times full of grass or clover or alfalfa hay. He finds that by this method they consume less corn and do not suf- fer from indigestion from the result of too much grain. He does not turn the sheep to pasture until such time as danger from infection by intestinal parasites is past. CGHAP THR 2 THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. AILMENTS IN GENERAL. The writer is sure that sooner or later the reader will feel a sudden need of knowledge of sheep diseases and the remedies therefor. Thus at the risk of dupheating a good deal that has been said e!sewhere, he devotes this chapter specifically to sheep diseases. At the outset let me say that to the novice, and sometimes to the professional, it is very difficult oftentimes to say just what ails a sick sheep. Diseases may, however, be divided into three principal classes. First, there may be some external parasite, as the tick, louse, scab or foot rot (which is in a sense an external disease. ) Second, there may be some form of internal parasitism. This may be worms in the stom- ach or intestines, in the throat or lungs, or encysted worms making a bladder in the brain. And one or another of these internal parasites is the cause of most of the sickness among sheep. Last, there may be some derangement of the digestion due to improper feeding, no feeding (308) THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. 309 at all, or gorging with grain. And in some regions, among the class of sheepmen who feed sheep in winter, nearly all diseases are of this origin. Now as to chance of cure. For external para- sites cure is easy and cheap. For scab, lice, and ticks there is the dipping bath, and this has been carefully explained in another place. Foot-rot is also of rather easy treatment. These things are matters requiring timely and prompt treatment and are no cause for alarm whatever except as scab breaks out in the winter time in the middle of the feeding season, when it is costly to dip and the sheep have seri- ous set-back therefrom. Indeed it is not just proper to class these external parasites as dis- eases, any more than fleas on a dog’s back, though they produce disease if left unchecked. The matter of internal parasites is much more serious. Nine-tenths of all the troubles of sheep east of the Missouri river are caused by some form or other of these plagues, or by a combina- tion of them. We will presently give to them some attention in detail. Derangements of the digestion, caused by too much or too little food, or by food of improper quality, are often hard to diagnose. For ex- ample, recently a neighbor of the writer came to him for advice. His wethers suffered from some brain disorder, they turned around and around in small circles, acting stupefied; they lingered a few days and died. ‘These sheep had come from the same range in Montana. The writer promptly diagnosed the disease as gid S10 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. or turn sickness caused by the encysted parasites called Taenia Coenurus. This worm is the fruit of a tape worm that infests dogs or wolves. The eggs pass from the dogs or wolves and are taken in by the sheep on the grass or in their drinking water. They hatch within the sheep and the young worms pierce the walls of the stomach, gaining the blood where they travel until they reach the brain, where they undergo a change, developing heads and making large bladders in which to live. It is necessary that the sheep should die after these cysts have reached a certain stage of de- velopment so that some dog, fox or wolf may feed upon the dead sheep’s head and thus take into its own system the parasites which become established there as regular tape worms. ‘Thus the round is continued. The tape worm within the dog or wolf reinfects the grass, the sheep become affected and die to infect more dogs (if there are any). Now the way this hydatid affects sheep is by pressing upon the brain sub- stance and absorbing it until the nervous sys- tem is quite deranged, the sheep is stupid, it turns steadily round and round, always the same way, neglects food and dies. The disease is somewhat prevalent in Eng- land and Scotland some years but is probably rare in America, at least in a rather long ex- perience the writer is not sure that he has ever seen an instance of it, but from his book lore he advised his neighbor to dissect the next ail- ing sheep and look for the brain bladder worm or hydatid. The neighbor obeyed, but no brain THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. pit disease was found. Another neighbor sent word to the afflicted one to cease feeding millet hay full of seed which he did and lost no more sheep, having lost some 30 before. Thus there was a clear case of deranged digestion deceiving one by the symptoms resembling those of brain par- asitism. The writer has seen other instances of de- ranged digestion that in the last stages gave symptoms very like the ones described. Now a word about true ‘‘turn sickness.’’ It is sometimes possible to cure the disease by locating the place in the brain where the blad- der is formed and cutting through the skull and destroying the parasite by puncturing the sac that holds it. Recovery sometimes follows this operation, it is said. And in Scotland it is re- ported that some shepherds have such skill that they can push a sharp wire up the nostril till it. locates and punctures the bladder in the brain. This is an interesting and astounding fact, if true. In practice, in America, where sheep are plenty and veterinarians of the finest skill in sheep diseases are costly to employ for such eases, it is best to kill the sheep for mut- ton (which is not hurt by the brain hydatid in the earlier stages), feed the head to the fire, and not to dogs and get some new sheep. It is a safe rule never to allow a dog or wolf to de- vour a sheep’s head at any time. And dogs about the place may well be treated for tape worms. Dr. Rushworth thus prescribes for tape worms in dogs: ‘‘The dog to be treated should not be fed for at least twelve hours before re- aie SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. ceiving the medicine but it can be allowed all the water it chooses. The evening before ad- ministering the worm medicine a dose of castor oil is advisable; for large dogs the dose is three tablespoonfuls. Then in the morning take of kamala 3 drachms, gruel 1 ounce, mix and give as a dose. With a medium sized dog two drachms of kamala will be sufficient. This is a very effective taeniacide.’’ As to the cure of disorders of sheep caused by overteeding in the barn or feed lot. Cases will occur in the best regulated barns, not very many when things are carefully done, but always some. The writer and his brothers and neigh- bors have lost hundreds of sheep and lambs in this manner and tried many reputed remedies. He does not now believe he has ever benefited a sick sheep by medicine or treatment when the cause was due to serious derangement of diges- tion. Death is almost sure to follow no matter what you may do. If there is virtue in any thing it is in simply taking the sheep away from all grain whatever and letting it alone. If there is not too much internal disorder this will suffice but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred when the sheep is sick enough to be very noticeable it will die no matter what you may do. So pre- vention, not remedy is the rule for disorders of the digestion. These cases come from gorging with grain and there is probably some toxic poison formed, for in many instances where the writer has made post-mortem examinations of afflicted sheep immediately after death no mor- bid condition was apparent save a slight inflam- THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. oie mation of some part of the intestinal tract, and sometimes even this was not in evidence. Disorders of the bladder causing stoppage of the urine are caused by the deposit. of limy sub- stances in the bladder, which become washed into the urethra where they lodge, causing in- flammation, stoppage of the urine, a period of suffering accompanied with great distension of the bladder, then death. The reason for this disorder seems to be in some instances the eating of too many mangels rich in lime, the eating of too much salt, or the drinking of water too ‘‘hard’’ with lime. The worst instance that ever came under the writ- er’s observation was in his own feeding barns where he had a great store of oat hay, put up so very moist that to save it, it was liberally sprinkled with salt. The salt was greatly in excess of the needs of the animals and made them consume much more water than they otherwise would. Very many of the wether lambs became afflicted with this distressing malady and many remedies were attempted to save them. Some few may have been benefited, though the writer doubts it. It is recommended to cut off the vermiform appendage in the end of the penis, and to slit the penis, opening the urethra, to free it from limy substances that obstruct. The writer advises prevention, and in his own experience with thousands of sheep and lambs under observation fed by his broth- ers for some years, good plain practice, using the same water supply, has resulted in not one instance of ‘‘water belly.’? The writer has 314 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. been informed of other instances where oat hay had seemingly caused this disorder without the accompaniment of an overdose of salt. The use of clover or alfalfa hay with corn silage in not too great quantity and corn, with oats or bran if desired, will not cause this dis- order in one instance in thousands. This is not a treatise on starvation, but it may be as well to drop here a hint that sheep that have been starved near to death for some time are not usually profitable animals to buy, since they take a long time to recover and many will die in the process unless great care is used in building them up again. The writer has known instances of famishing sheep being bought for a few cents each on some dried-up and overstocked range, shipped to other more fruitful ranges distant some ways and there turned out on good grass. They died rapidly, however, and continued to die for some time after being placed on the good feed. IMPORTANCE OF POST-MORTEM DISSECTION. The novice in sheep breeding and feeding, or the old hand for that matter, should take fre- quent opportunity of post-mortem examination of a sheep recently dead, seeking to see whether the cause of death is from disordered digestion or parasitic infection. It is useless to dissect a sheep that has been dead for some days and even after the lapse of a few hours there will often be misleading appearances, as of blood settling in one part or another, that will cause him to form very curious conclusions as to the THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. 315 cause of death and miss the real cause entirely. It would be amusing if it was not so annoying to read the letters from sheep owners attempt- ing to describe the symptoms of their sick sheep and the results found after their making crude post-mortem examination. Let us rest the case here; that only careful regular and judicious feeding will prevent death in the barn and feed lot and that medica- tion for ‘‘water belly’’ or retention of urine and for serious indigestion has never yet proved of use. The fact is that the sheep suffering from slight indigestion is not readily detected among hundreds, and when its case is obvious it is too far gone generally to be helped by any known treatment whatever. OTHER DISEASES OF SHEEP. Of a long list of diseases that sheep may sometimes be afflicted with, such as rheuma- tism, apoplexy, goitre, pining, humping, ery- sipelas, actinomycosis, tetanus, rabies, sheep pox, and a lot of other diseases usually cata- logued, the writer has seldom seen an instance in his own flocks and if he had seen it would have felt powerless to help, with all the know!l- edge of specialists available. Sheep are said to suffer sometimes from black leg but it is rarely if ever reported in America, and in Eng- land, on the extremely fertile pastures of Kent, sheep suffer from anthrax. This disease is rare indeed in America among sheep. Sheep do not suffer from tuberculosis, at 316 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. least the disease is exceedingly rare among them in America or elsewhere. In truth, of the long list of diseases usually catalogued as occurring in sheep the shepherd will not in his lifetime observe more than one or two, always excepting the diseases that come from internal or external parasites, from un- wise feeding and from garget of the udder. It is wise, therefore, to study carefully the question of the internal parasite and to learn wavs of management that will avoid them. This learned all the long catalogue of diseases may repose serenely upon the library shelf, since the occurrence of an instance of one of them in the flock will be of the rarest. GARGET OR MAMMITIS. This is a disease that affects the udders of the very best and largest milking ewes, pre- ferring those that are best bred and most cod- dled. The symptoms are a hard, distended udder, from which a changed sort of watery milk may be drawn, which often becomes streaked with blood and sometimes with pus. The flesh of the udder is often red or purple and upon pressure can be dented with the hand. The ewe has fever and distress, milk secretion ceases, the udder mortifies and if the ewe lives long enough it sloughs off, leaving a sore slow to heal. In mild cases the symptoms are much less severe and the ewe soon recovers, losing perhaps the use of one quarter of her udder. One of the causes that led the author to at- tempt this work was his despair of finding light THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. 317 on this and some other subjects in any existent book that had come to his notice. The causes usually assigned to the production of garget are lying on the cold ground, bunting by lambs or from having too much milk for the lamb to take clean. Doubtless all these things are evils, but the writer is convinced that the cause of garget is something quite apart from any one of them. Probably there are two forms of garget, caused by different things and running differ- ent courses. Too much milk in the udder caused by the death or removal of a lamb, may cause eaked bag and injure a portion of the udder, but that is a far different disease from the ma- hgnant garget that has often nearly broken the heart of the writer and of his vounger brother, upon whose shoulders the mantle of shepherd- ing on Woodland Farm has fallen. Indeed, ex- eepting that the seat of the disease is in the udder, there are no symptoms in common with the two diseases. The writer has never seen a ease of caked bag result fatally and but one or two of real garget recover; those after a long period of healing when the entire udder had sloughed off. The writer believes that all the cases of ma- lignant garget that have come under his obser- vation have had a common cause, one not men- tioned in the books, a sudden increase in the food of the ewe, resulting in perhaps some mor- bid change in her blood that going to the udder, shortly after her lambing (the period has some- times been as long perhaps as two weeks there- after) and finding there some favorite germ has 318 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. set up there the great and rapid destruction of live tissue that is seen. Doubtless the disease is caused by the multiplication of microbes com- ing from an introduced germ, equally doubtless the conditions must be right for the develop- ment of the germ. And the right conditions seem to be the derangement of the blood by too much food, especially by feeding with corn (maize). A skilled veterinarian once related to the writer that he had never dissected the udder of a cow without finding therein, along with the milk ducts, germs of bacteria that he consid- ered the agents that cause bovine garget. How the germ got there he could not tell. When conditions were right for the germ it multiplied and did its work of destruction. When con- ditions were right for the cow it remained, wait- ing. This is probably the explanation also in the case of the ewe. Corn feeding of milking ewes has apparently induced most of the cases of malignant garget that have come under the writer’s observation. Indeed he has seen a fine ewe, proud of her two beautiful lambs, with an udder lke a Jersey cow, break into the lot of feeding lambs and gorge herself with corn; he has predicted at once that she would come down with garget, and has seen his sombre prediction verified; has had the sad task of trying to find mothers for the two worse than orphans and nursed the mother for weeks till at last, ghost of her former self, she went with the flock again, her udder com- THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. 319 pletely gone and only a partly healed surface to show where it had sloughed off. The books prescribe for malignant garget hot water, camphor, applied externally, and epsom salts and iron and quinine taken inter- nally. The writer after faithful efforts with hot water and all the rest of the remedies does not feel that he has ever in one instance even mitigated the horrors of this form of garget, so will not burden the reader with his recipes. Let the shepherd experiencing his first instance of trouble resolve that hereafter his ewes shall have the most gradual increase in feed after lambing; that they shall be given little corn and more bran, oats and early-cut clover or alfalfa hay, with roots or silage to make milk and that by this means he can prevent future inflictions of this nature. For the simpler form of caked bag, however, hot water applications are doubtless good, with rubbings of camphor and belladonna, and some have recommended counter irritants like kero- sene oil. This form will never occur either if the shepherd will keep the ewe milked out after lambing, and perhaps sometimes just before lambing if she is a wonderful milker, and will feed right taking care also at weaning time. GRUBS IN THE HEAD. Most of the old sheep books have chapters on this disease. It seems therefore the duty of the writer to speak of it also though he must con- fess that his practical experience with the pest 320 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. has been very small. This may be because his flocks have almost always had shade of dark barn basements in which to lie during the heat of the day, conditions not conducive to the de- position of the eggs that hatching in the nostrils of the sheep crawl up into the sinuses of the nose and form the mature grubs. It may be, also, that well nourished sheep the more easily repel the grubs, or endure them with least in- convenience. There is no cure for grubs, once they are established. They can not crawl into the brain of the sheep. They will come out of their own accord in due time. They change into a fly that in turn lays eggs for more grubs. You can- not do anything except to feed well the sheep. ‘‘Grub in the belly is a cure for grub in the head’’ is an old saying. Tar on the noses will let the sheep eat in comfort; once shepherds bored holes in logs and put salt in the bottom of the holes and pine tar around them. Sheep eat- ing the salt got the tar. It needed replenishing daily, or oftener. Easier is the darkened shed for the sheep to lie in. LIVER FLUKE.—‘‘ THE ROT.”’ This terrible disease has caused in the past great havoc in the old world. It is less prev- alent there since the underdraining of their lands. It was a parasitic disease; the parasite passing one stage of its life in the liver of the sheep, the other in the body of a snail. If there is no water for the snail (a water species is THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. Sak chosen) the flukes cannot propagate. There is very little if any of the disease in America. NODULAR DISEASE. This is the disease commonly called by butch- ers ‘‘knotty guts.’’ It is characterized by small tumors on the intestines, the tumors filled with a greenish cheesy substance. The disease is eaused by a small worm, about an inch long, ealled oesophagostoma columbianum. The worm thrives in spite of its name. This worm seems a distinctly American species, inhabiting deer, goats and sheep, possibly rabbits. What it does to the sheep is to interfere with the di- gestion and assimilation of food. It works its way gradually into a flock and brings ruin to it. There is said to be no cure. Its progress is usually slow and it takes years to kill a sheep, asarule. The way of spreading is by infecting the soil and grass through the excrements of the afflicted sheep. Therefore when sheep are so managed that lambs do not graze much be- hind their mothers they will not become affect- ed. Presumably the contamination of the soil will not last longer than one year. This point we hope will be demonstrated by our national or state experiment stations before long. It is a vital necessity to know that of both the nodu- lar disease and the stomach worm. ‘Thus it is evident that a healthy flock can be produced by not intermixing the infection free young sheep with the infected older ones, and fattening and by marketing the older ones as fast as practic- able. Little or nothing in the way of medica- 322 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. tion can be done to cure the afflicted sheep. Prevention of the disease by right treatment of the young ones is the thing to be aimed at. TAPE WORMS. There are occasionally outbreaks of disease caused by tape worms. Montana and the Da- kotas have suffered from these outbreaks, also various regions in the Eastern states. The writer has never observed a case of this kind upon the farm occupied by himself and his brothers and attributes this freedom from in- fection in part at least to the free feeding of pumpkins in the fall of almost every year. Pumpkin seeds are well known vermifuges of great value. The tape worm of sheep, tenia expansa, va- ries in length from three to six yards. It is from one twenty-fifth of an inch in breadth at the head to one-half an inch at the tail. In ap- pearance it is a dull white. It causes scouring, bloodlessness, white skin, emaciation, weakness and sometimes death. Treatment should be given to each one of the affected flock. Prepare them for treatment by fasting for 12 hours. After being treated they should be confined for 24 hours so that the seg- ments of tape worm expelled will not be scat- tered over the fields, to further infect them. The sheep should after treatment has been deemed satisfactory be put on clean fresh ground. Dr. Rushworth always prescribes kamala for tape worms The dose is three drachms mixed THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. 323 well in three ounces of linseed gruel, this dose for adult sheep. Lambs will require from one to two drachins, according to their size. Any medicine administered to a sheep should be given with the sheep standing in a natural position, with its head raised not too high, and given slowly, so that it may pass at once into the fourth stomach. If it passes into the paunch it will probably not do much good. If the kamala does not prove effective Rush- worth advises giving ethereal extract of male shield fern, one drachm castor oil, four ounces, mix and give as a dose to mature sheep. Lambs ean have from one to three-fourths of this dose. A tonic is then prescribed, consisting of salt, 2 pounds, epsom salts, 1 pound, sulphate of iron, one-half pound, powdered gentian, one half pound, nitrate of potash, 4 ounces. This is to be mixed together and fed to 100 sheep, in oats, bran or other feed. The writer believes good feed and change of pasture will make much tonic unnecessary. HUSK, HOOSE OR PARASITIC BRONCHITIS. There is a minute parasitic worm called Strongylus filaria that inhabits the bronchial tubes. causing the animals to cough and run at the nose, sometimes bringing death. In the opinion of the writer this is not a very prev- alent disease in America, fortunately. The remedy is thought to be to fumigate with sul- phur. The writer has tried the remedy and though the lambs treated did not have the dis- ease for which he treated them they mostly sur- 324 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. vived the operation What they had, and what most coughing, emaciated lambs have, is a re- lated parasite, of far more import to us all, the dreaded stomach worm. THE STOMACH WORM. This little worm is but 34 of an inch long and about as thick as a hair. It lives in the fourth stomach and especially afflicts lambs. It causes the diseases (or symptoms, rather) of ‘‘paper skin,’’ ‘‘black scours,’’ ‘‘lamb cholera’’ and so on. -It attacks lambs at any age after they be- gin to nibble grass until cool weather comes in the fall. It is the smallest parasite yet men- tioned in this list of diseases and has wrought a hundred times the havoe that these have all to- gether It has devastated whole regions so that the sheep industry has been given up to them and men have taken to breeding swine. The stomach worm is responsible for gullied hill- sides, abandoned farms, and boys leaving the farm. It is not a new pest but in olden time when sheep suffered from it men did not know the cause. Many years ago it swept over Ohio, decimating the Merino flocks, and over all the states of the corn belt. Then no remedy was known, nor was it understood whence came in- fection or how immunity could be had. Now we know all this and the stomach worm has lost its terrors to the intelligent and watchful shepherd. This fourth stomach of the sheep is just where the intestines attach and where an important part of the digestion takes place. When it is THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. 825 filled with these tiny worms digestion is wonder- fully disturbed and the lamb loses tone, the wool appears dead, the skin loses its pinkness, the appetite is deranged. The lamb may scour and may be constipated. It eats earth or rotten wood, in the latter stages of the disease. There may come a dropsical swelling beneath the un- der jaw. This is not a disease, only a symptom of the disease. Depend upon it, if it is May, or from then till October, and your lambs are droopy, lan- guid, their wool dead looking, their skins chalky, they have stomach worms. Just catch one and kill it, dissect it at once and examine the fourth stomach with care. You will surely see there the little writhing serpents that do the mischief. These worms inhabit old sheep too, but do not do them so muck harm. The life history is like this: the worms become mature in the body of the older sheep and pass out, laden with eggs about to hatch. The little worms do some- thing, we do not know what, to get back into the sheep again. Probably they crawl up a little way on the grass. The lambs come along and nibbling close on tender grass where the ewes’ excrements have been dropped take in the worms They mature in the lamb and raise havoc there as we have said. Now cold weather either numbs or destroys these worms so that there is no danger of in- fection in winter, late fall or early spring. Elsewhere, in management, the prevention of stomach worms is described. Here we will con- cern ourselves with the cure of afflicted lambs. 326 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. The writer has dosed hundreds. For a number of years he has, on the same farm, had no eases to doctor. Moral: there is something in manage- ment. But there is something in cure also. Therefore the writer appends parts of bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Animal Industry pre- pared by B. H. Ransom, March 1907. The niter has faith in the gasoline treatment and was the first man in America to administer it. His brother has had better success with ear- bolic acid than coal tar creosote using 12 drops for a mature sheep, given in milk. The bulletin follows: The stomach worm of sheep, known to zoolo- gists as Haemonchus contortus, 18 generally recognized as one of the most serious pests with which the sheep raiser has to contend. Sheep of all ages are subject to infection, and cattle and eoats as well as various wild ruminants may also harbor the parasite. The most serious effects of stomach-worm infection are seen in lambs, while full-grown sheep, although heavily infested, may show no apparent symptoms of disease. It is from these, however, through the medium of the pasture, that the lambs be- come infected. SYMPTOMS AND DIAGNOSIS. Among the symptoms which have been de- scribed for stomach-worm disease probably the most frequent are anemia, loss of flesh, general weakness, dullness, capricious appetite, thirst, and diarrhea. The anemic condition is seen in the paleness of the skin and mucous membranes THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. 55 at of the mouth and eye, and in the watery swell- ings which often develop under the lower jaw. A more certain diagnosis may be made by kill- ing one of the flock and opening the fourth stomach. The contents of the fourth stomach are allowed to settle gently, and by carefully watching the liquid the parasites, if present in any considerable numbers, will be seen actively wriggling about like little snakes from one-half to 114 inches long and about as thick as an ordi- nary pin. LIFE HISTORY OF THE STOMACH WORM. The worms in the stomach produce eggs of microscopic size, which pass out of the body in the droppings and are thus scattered broadcast over the pasture. If the temperature is above 40° to 50° F. the eggs hatch out, requiring from a few hours to two weeks, according as the tem- perature is high or low. When the tempera- ture is below 40° F. the eggs remain dormant, and in this condition may retain their vitality for two or three months, afterwards hatching out if the weather becomes warmer. Freezing or drying soon kills the unhatched eggs. The tiny worm which hatches from the egg feeds up- on the organic matter in the manure, and grows until it is nearly one-thirtieth of an inch in length. Further development then ceases until the worm is swallowed by a sheep or other ruminant, after which it again begins to grow, and reaches maturity in the fourth stomach of its host in two to three weeks. The chances of the young worms being swallowed are greatly 828 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. increased by the fact that they crawl up blades of grass whenever sufficient moisture—such as dew, rain, or fog—is present, provided also that the temperature is above 40°F. When the tem- perature is below 40°F. the worms are inactive. The young worms which have reached the stage when they are ready to be taken into the body are greatly resistant to cold and dryness; they will stand repeated freezing, and have been kept in a dried condition for thirty-five days, afterwards reviving when moisture was added. Ata temperature of about 70° F’. young worms have been kept alive for as long as six months, and the infection in inclosures (near Washington, D. C.) which has been pastured by infested sheep did not die out in over seven months, including the winter, the inclosures having been left vacant from October 25 to June 16. It is uncertain whether infection in fields from which sheep have been removed will die out more rapidly during warm weather or during cold weather; experiments on this point are under way, but have not been sufficiently completed for definite statements to be made. It is, however, safe to say that a field which has had no sheep, cattle, or goats upon it for a year will be practically free from infection, and fields which have had no sheep or other ruminants upon them following cultivation may also be safely used. The time required for a clean pasture to become infectious after infested sheep are placed upon it depends upon the tem- perature; that is, the field does not become in- fectious until the eggs of the parasites contained THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. 329 in the droppings of the sheep have hatched out and the young worms have developed to the final larval stage, and the rapidity of this development depends upon the temperature. It may be stated here that neither the eggs nor the newly hatched worms are infectious and only those worms which have reached the final larval stage are able to continue their development when swallowed. This final larval stage is reached in three to four days after the eggs have passed out of the body of the host if the temperature remains constantly at about 95° F. At 70° F., six to fourteen days are required, and at 46° to 57° F., aggregating about 50° F., three to four weeks are necessary for the eggs to hatch and the young worms to develop to the infec- tious stage. At temperatures below 40° F., as already stated, the eggs remain dormant. METHODS OF PREVENTING INFECTION. It is evident from the foregoing statements that in the northern part of the United States, under usual climatic conditions, infested and non-infested sheep may be placed together in clean fields the last of October or first of No- vember and kept there until March or even later, according to the weather, with little or no danger of the non-infested sheep becoming in- fected. If moved then to another clean field they may remain there nearly the entire month of April before there is danger of infection. From the Ist of May on through the summer the pastures become infectious much more quickly after infested sheep are placed upon them, and 330 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. during May it would be necessary to move the sheep at the end of every two weeks, in June at the end of every ten days, and in July and August at the end of each week, in order to pre- vent the non-infested sheep from becoming in- fected from the worms present in the rest of the flock. After the Ist of September the period may again be lengthened. This method of pre- venting infection in lambs would require a con- siderable number of small pastures or subdivi- sions of large pastures, and in many instances could not be profitably employed, but in cases where it could be used it would undoubtedly prove very effective. By the time the next lamb crop appeared the pastures used the year be- fore would have remained vacant long enough for the infection to have disappeared, and would consequently again be ready for use. By con- tinuing this rotation from year to year, not only would each crop of lambs be protected from in- fection, but as reinfection of the infested ewe flock is prevented at the same time, the parasite would in a few years be entirely eradicated from the flock and pastures. If such frequent rotation is not possible or practicable, a smaller number of pastures may be utilized, after the ewe flock has been treated with vermifuges. The treatment may be given either before or after the birth of the lambs. If before, the ewes should be treated before preg- nancy is too far advanced, in order to avoid pos- sible bad results from the handling necessary in treatment. Probably the best time for treat- ment is late in the fall or early in the winter. THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. 331 The treated sheep should be placed immediately on clean pasture in order to avoid reinfection. The object of treating the ewes is to get rid of the worms with which they are infested, and thus remove the source from which the pasture becomes contaminated. If it were possible by treatment to free the old sheep entirely from stomach worms, it is evident that the lambs would remain free from infection, provided, of course, that the flock were afterwards kept on clean pasture. Unfortunately, there is no ver- mifuge known which can always be depended upon to remove all of the worms, but it is pos- sible to get rid of most of them and thus greatly reduce the amount of infection to which the lambs will be exposed. Two other methods may be suggested by which lambs can be kept free from infection with stomach worms. 1. Itis assumed that a large pasture is avail- able which has had no sheep, goats, or cattle upon it for a year, if a permanent pasture, or since cultivation, if a seeded pasture. This pasture is subdivided into two by a double line of fence, and a drainage ditch is run along the alley between the two fences. At one end of the alley between the two subdivisions a small yard is constructed, communicating with each of the subdivisions by means of a gate. When the Jambs are born they are placed in one of the subdivisions and the ewes are placed in the other. The small yard should be kept free of vegetation and must not drain into the lamb pasture. As often as necessary the lambs are 332 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. allowed in the small yard with the ewes for suckling. The rest of the time the lambs and the ewes are kept separate in their respective pastures. By this arrangement the lambs are ex- posed to infection only while they are in the small yard, where they may become infected either by embryos of the stomach worm present on the manure-soiled skin of the infested ewe, or by embryos picked up from the ground which has been contaminated by the droppings of the ewes. The chances of infection from the skin of the ewe are so light that in practice this source of infection need not be considered. The danger of infection from the ground may be avoided by frequently removing the manure from the yard and keeping the surface sprinkled with lime and salt. The lambs and ewes will soon learn the way to their proper pastures, and after a few days little difficulty will be experi- enced in separating them each time after the lambs are through suckling. 2. Another plan which may be followed — where the climatic conditions are suitable—that is, In regions where there is a cold winter sea- son—is that of having the lambs born at a time of year when there will be no danger of their be- coming infected during the suckling period, and weaning and separating them from the rest of the flock before the advent of warm weather. Under the usual climatic conditions of the State of Ohio, for instance, if the lambs are born in the latter part of October or the first of Novem- ber they may remain with the ewes on fields which have not been previously occupied by THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. ooo sheep, goats or cattle within a year—or, if cul- tivated fields, since cultivation—until the fol- lowing March without danger of becoming in- fected, since the eggs in the droppings of the infested ewes will not hatch out during this time of year because of the cold weather. The use of fields not previously occupied by sheep, goats, or cattle within a year, or since cultiva- tion, 1s necessary, since otherwise the fields would be already infected with young worms which had hatched out and reached the infec- tious stage before the beginning of cold weather, and the lambs would consequently be lable to infection trom picking up these young worms, which are not killed by cold weather after they have reached the final stage of larval develop- ment. When they are weaned the lambs must, of course, be placed on clean pasture, if they are to continue free from infection. With this method only two clean pastures are necessary, one in which the ewes and lambs are placed in the fall, and another for the lambs when they are weaned in March. Unfortunately for this scheme, it is not always possible to have lambs born at the be- ginning of the winter season; but with addi- tional clean pastures a modification of the fore- going method may be used-in the case of lambs born toward the end of the winter or in the spring. In the northern United States lambs born the first of February for example, may be kept with their mothers in a clean field or past- ure until the last of March, as in the case of those born at the beginning of winter, but un- 334 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. like the latter they will not then be old enough to wean. Accordingly they are not separated from the rest of the flock, but the ewes and lambs are moved together to a second clean pasture April 1. May 1 they are moved to a third clean pasture, May 15 they are moved again, and finally the lambs are weaned June 1 at the age of four months, and moved by them- selves to a clean pasture. In the case of lambs born the first of March and weaned the first of July three additional clean pastures would be required for use during the month of June, and with later lambs a still greater number of past- ures would be necessary. TREATMENT FOR STOMACH WORMS. Among the remedies which may be used to re- move stomach worms may be mentioned coal- tar creosote, bluestone, and gasoline. The animals to be treated should be deprived of feed for twelve to sixteen or even twenty- four hours before they are dosed, and in ease bluestone is used should receive no water on the day they are dosed, either before or after dos- ing. In drenching, a long-necked bottle or a drenching tube may be used. In case a bottle is used the dose to be given may be first measured off, poured into the bottle, and the point marked on the outside of the bottle with a file, so that subsequent doses may be measured in the bot- tle itself. A simple form of drenching tube con- sists of a piece of rubber tubing about 3 feet long and one-half inch in diameter, with an or- dinary tin funnel inserted in one end and a piece THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. 835 of brass or iron tubing 4 to 6 inches long and of suitable diameter inserted in the other end. In use the metal tube is placed in the animal’s mouth between the back teeth, and the dose is poured into the funnel, which is either held by an assistant or fastened to a post. The flow of hquid through the tube is controlled by pinch- ing the rubber tubing near the point of union with the metal tube. It is important not to raise the animal’s head too high on account of the danger of the dose entering the lungs. The nose should not be raised higher than the level of the eyes. The animal may be dosed either standing on all fours or set upon its haunches. It has been found by experiment that if the dose is taken quietly most of it will pass directly to the fourth stomach when the animal is dosed in a standing position, and that when the animal is placed on its haunches only a part of the dose passes immediately to the fourth stomach. From this it is evident that the position on all fours is preferable, as more of the dose passes to the place where its action is required. Great care should be used not only in dosing to avoid the entrance of the liquid into the lungs, but also in the preparation and adminis- tration of the remedy so that the solution may not be too strong or the dose too large. COAL-TAR CREOSOTE. Good results have been obtained from a single dose of a 1 per cent solution of coal-tar creosote. This solution is made by shaking together 1 ounce of coal-tar creosote and 99 ounces (6 336 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. pints 3 ounces) of water. The doses of this 1 per cent mixture recommended by Stiles are as follows: Rampbs4 "tol 2 months Oldie oc) Soe cus la ceers oe eats 2to 4 ounces. Vearling SHEED ANG ADOVEs ce c.cielsl> ic cicine eine syelesylaisiete 3 to 5 ounces. Calvesis pO samonths! Old) ccecces cette acisic cece ster 5 to 10 ounces. Weaxrling Steers ss s.c)eis sais Saye sisters eataee tae 1 pint. Two-year-Olds ang aWOVe... 2. ese ccm citccviep ace cite 1 quart. Serious objections to the use of coal-tar creo- sote have been found in that the substance known by this name varies considerably in com- position and in that some trouble is often ex- perienced in obtaining it in many parts of the country. Complaints have been made that the substance dispensed by some druggists as coal- tar creosote has failed to give satisfactory re- ae BLUESTONE. Bluestone, or copper sulphate, has been ex- tensively used in South Africa in the treatment of sheep for stomach worms and is recommended by the colonial veterinary surgeon of Cape Colony as the best and safest remedy. His di- rections are to take 1 pound avoirdupois of pure bluestone, powder it fine, and dissolve in nine and one-half United States gallons of warm water. It is better to first dissolve the bluestone in 2 to 4 quarts of boil- ing water, then add the remaining quantity in cold water, and mix thoroughly. This solution is given in the following-sized doses: EaAmMps SmMoOnshsiOlaee seoawie sccieae eee os aclewiss ealleeare % ounce. Bamps: GImMoOnths' O1G so ocecteretocrcrecreisl=/2'o ate vain terse) aseteraees 1% ounces. Sheep 12 moOnihs 010 ies bab cen ub oetee mene ceenies 2% ounces. Sheep 18 MONTHS OlON. SAU eee ces oc vowel weg 3 ounces. Sheep 24 months Old.) oq acis cis sions « semen sa masie(er sans 3% ounces. In making up the solution only clear blue THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. 337 erystals of bluestone should be used. Bluestone with white patches or crusts should be rejected. It is especially important that the bluestone and water be accurately weighed and measured, and that the size of the dose be graduated ac- cording to the age of the sheep. GASOLINE. Gasoline is one of the most popular remedies for stomach worms which has been used in this eountry and has the particular advantage of being readily obtained. It is important to re- peat the dose if the gasoline treatment is em- ployed, and it is usual to administer the treat- ment on three successive days, as follows: The evening before the first treatment is to be given the animals are shut up without feed or water and are dosed about 10 o’clock the next morning. Three hours later they are al- lowed feed and water, and at mght they are again shut up without feed or water. The next morning the second dose is given, and the third morning the third dose, the treatment before and after dosing being the same in each case. The sizes of the doses are as follows: PIES OS Oo ee a aache fe dawwrcnc olus See inlnain eetatee 1 ounce. ROG TI, Sotelo clo cree ce Girne ale Reenetek one mice Mewes weeRee 14 ounce. MOE VOR eas se tom aha Sos vo eae Sorc eet ael abaee Oe Sen ee eh % ounce. MERTHTEs SUCCES —. <5 c ue cece hee eeman Sema sme eee Seine 1 ounce. The dose for each animal is measured and mixed separately in linseed oil, milk, or flaxseed tea, and administered by means of a bottle or drenching tube. Gasoline should not be given in water. OTHER REMEDIES. Many other remedies in addition to those 338 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. mentioned here have been used in the treat- ment of stomach worm disease with more or less success. Several of the coal tar dips on the market are recommended by the manufac- turers for the treatment of worms, and the action of some of them is much the same as that of coal tar creosote. The Department of Agriculture does not recommend the use of any particular proprie- tary remedy and as the action of some such agents 1s very uncertain it is suggested that, if it is desired to use them, they be used with cau- tion and only in accordance with the printed directions on the package. Whatever remedy is used, it is wise to test it on two or three animals before the entire flock is dosed. START WITH A HEALTHY FLOCK. It may be that the reader has a flock of dis- eased sheep. He has had much trouble with stomach worms, or the nodular disease has in- vaded the flock, or he has bad losses from tape- worms. Shall he therefore go out. of business? That, indeed, may be his best course. To get rid of the diseased flock, first fatten- ing the sheep as well as possible, and to let the land rest for two years will be quite sure to make the land clean, ready for a new flock. But there are certain objections to this course. First, he gets out of touch with the sheep in- dustry, and that is bad. Then he begins to de- vote his land to other purposes and it is harder to again start with a flock. And there is the very real and practical difficulty that it 1s im- THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. 339 possible to be sure that the new flock is free from the enemies that led to the discarding of the old one. The shepherd may take advantage of the fact that lambs are born healthy to start anew witha clean flock, even though his ewes were tainted. Infection will not come from the mother’s milk, unless in rare instances from the fouling of her udder. If she has a clean bed there is small risk of that. If she is scouring she should not be put in the company of ewes devoted to this pur- pose. | These ewes should be bred as early as practi- cable, so that their lambs will come if possible in November, December or January. That is because in northern situations there is practi- eally no danger of infection anywhere, indoors or out, in cold weather. Ewes and lambs should all be well fed to encourage a vigorous growth. When warm weather begins to come in April the ewes should be confined rigidly to the barn and small yard. In that yard there should not be permitted to grow even a single weed or spear of grass. This rule must be absolute. The yard must be small and kept always per- feetly clean. If it is not the lambs may nibble at some plant and from its lower lengths, or roots, imbibe the germs that we are seeking to avoid. Nor should there be any feed thrown into the yard. Furthermore the hay racks should be kept clean and the water pure at all times. As fast as ewes cease giving a good milk flow they should be removed to another pen and thus 340 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. their contact removed, with a per cent of the danger. When grass comes the lambs should be taken to a field where no sheep ran the previous year; where no sheep manure had been spread the previous year, and where no stream or pool could bring germs from some other flock. Once established there no other sheep should for an instant be permitted to mingle with them. The ewes, if there is room on the farm, may be kept over for another crop of lambs, since it will take two crops to produce enough ewe lambs to make up their number. After that all that are not of this youthful blood and free from infection should be sold and the young- sters given possession. At all times there should be this thought, ‘‘Has there been opportunity during the past year for any sheep to drop germs with their manure upon this land?’’ If the answer is yes, then do not permit the lambs and yearlings of the clean flock to graze upon that ground for an instant. The extra cost of this method of producing a perfectly healthy ewe flock is almost nothing. A trifle of care, a constant thoughtfulness, a few hours labor and the result; a banishment of the torments that render 60 per cent of farm flocks in the corn belt diseased and comparatively un- profitable. And having a healthy flock, absolutely with- out parasites, they will remain so if the germs are not brought in by something added to the flock. It is barely possible that rabbits may THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. 341 carry some of the same parasites that afflict sheep as also do goats and deer. Aside from them there are no other carriers of these germs so far as we know. Unfortunately we must purchase rams or else practice inbreeding. The writer is inclined to think that with strong, well bred, vigorous stock once secured it is wiser to inbreed for a time rather than to risk purchasing a new starter of germs with an un- certain ram. However, the ram himself may be put in quarantine on his arrival, permitted to associate with the flock only when he can be of use to it and at all other times have his own quarters, a grassy paddock with shed attached. Thus, without giving a dose of medicine or applying to the soil any lime, salt, corrosive sublimate or iron sulphate, the farm secures clean pastures, stocked with clean sheep. Following the thought of destroying the para- sites in the soil, as is frequently advised, by ap- plications of lime, salt or chemicals, the writer would call to the attention of the reader the folly of the proposal. There is in an acre 43,560 square feet. Supposing that we desired to purify that soil to a depth of one foot, not an unreason- able depth, there is then to purify 43,560 cubie feet of soil. It would take at least a pound of salt to destroy germ life in a cubic foot of soil; it is doubtful if that would suffice, so that about 21 tons of salt to the acre would be required. Of lime probably two or three times as much would be needed, and when it comes to applying chem- icals one had better halt, for he will have de- Stroyed his land before he will have killed the 342 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. germs; that much is sure. And why do this thing, when all these germs will perish (we be- lieve) in one year unless they find their host, a sheep, deer or goat, in which to undergo part of their life cycle? The writer is very glad to give credit to Dr. W. H. Dalrymple of Louisiana, for hav- ing performed by far the most useful series of experiments ever made in attempting to rid sheep of parasites in much the manner that he has described in the foregoing paragraphs. It is remarkable that a far Southern state should undertake a work fraught with so much im- port to men in the sheep growing regions fur- ther north, the explanation being of course that Dr. Dalrymple is a Scot. CHAPTER: 31. THE ANGORA AND MILKING GOATS. It may not be out of place in this work to give a little information concerning the Angora goat, which is now becoming so well and favor- ably known. Indeed the sudden arrival of the Angora into public appreciation and its very wide distribu- tion will make inspiring chapters in the history of American live stock. THE ANGORA GOAT. While not meaning to wander far into the realms of goat lore yet a few words concerning this work. So late as 1897 the first large num- ber of goats were sent from Texas to Iowa as an experiment in brush destruction, going to J. R. Standley. These goats ‘‘grubbed the land, brought in grass and boarded themselves, be- sides yielding a profit.’’ Other shipments fol- lowed. ‘They also were successful. Since that time goats have been introduced into every state and territory of the United States and into Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands. Usu- ally they have accomplished their object; they have destroyed brush, and grass has followed (343) 344 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. in their footsteps. Now there is a demand for goats and inquiry concerning them. Several kinds of disappointments have followed the introduction of so-called ‘‘Angoras’’ into new neighborhoods. To answer some of the many questions arising in connection with this sub- ject this chapter is written. Breeders of Angora goats should have one of the following works, ‘‘New Industry, or Raising the Angora Goat and Mohair for profit,’’ by Wm. L. Black of Texas; ‘‘Angora Goat Raising and Milch Goats,’’ by George Fayette Thompson, or ‘‘ The Angora Goat,’’ by S. C. C. Schreiner (Long- mans, Green & Co.). Schreiner’s work is a classic, a thing of beauty. Thompson is con- cise and practical, enthusiastic enough, and tells besides much about milking goats. Black is an earnest advocate and presents a great array of facts and examples of successful practice. I think he leaves out the failures and some of the difficulties. Very extravagant things are claimed for Angora goats. It has been claimed that they will shear from six to eight pounds of mohair per year, worth—well, all sorts of prices from 7d cents to $8.00. That was in the olden time. They have been claimed to be immune to all sickness, hardy as the common goat; that they will kill dogs and keep disease from among horses; that they would clear land of brush and make delicious mutton at the same time; that they were very prolific. Now the simple truth is that the Angora goat is the most delicate, though the most beau- AN ANGORA GOAT SHOwW. - # + i yiPArh AVS ey _s oy , ‘ Ay ey . » \ ‘ : “ ' a 4 ¢ Tien ont voy ; Le Ap Yenrery ES =a, THE ANGORA AND MILKING GOATS. 347 tiful goat known. It is troubled with all the diseases that afflict sheep, or most of them. It is not very prolific, nor are the kids very easily raised in a cold and wet climate. It is not dog- proof, nor will it serve very well to keep dogs from sheep. It destroys brush effectually, if it can reach it, but should have some grass along with the brush to keep it in good order. And it shears a fleece of about 3 pounds that is worth from 7 to 40 cents per pound. While the writer from his study of goats believes his characterizations true, yet he be- heves further that despite their delicacy An- goras can be profitably grown in every state in the Union, wherever there is rough, dry, brushy land, that they may readily be kept’ in health, and more readily than sheep, since they are in no danger from parasitic infection while browsing on trees, and that the quality of their fleeces may be so greatly increased by system- atic breeding that the 7-cent fleeces will be- come extinct and even the best fleeces will be- come more valuable. Let us get at the history of the American Angora goat. The native home of the Angora is in Asiatic Turkey, on a high, dry and rather cold plateau. It may be that there is some peculiarity of the soil and climate of that re- gion or some mental twist of the breeders there, since there are other animals found there that have the long silky hair that characterizes the true Angora. Cats from Angora have that quality, and dogs are said sometimes to possess it. The ancient history of the Angora is un- 348 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. known. It has doubtless been the companion of man for countless ages and civilizations have existed upon the world far longer than we have been taught. This region of Angora was in the ancient days famed for the wonderful fabrics woven there, and the Angora goat furnished the fleece for these fabrics. Occasionally war or famine decimated the flocks, and at last the changes in industrial life hushed the looms of Angora and the industry of spinning the fab- rics was transferred to England. Thereafter mohair became a regular export from Angora, and the quality of the product suffered at once. What was good enough to use at home became too good to sell abroad and the Angoras were crossed with a baser goat called the Kurd. It is thought that there is not now in the world a specimen of the true, ancient Angora. The loss has been in the fineness of the hair and the presence of more kemp, which is an under hair shorter and damaging to true mohair, because it will not take dye. It would seem from the studies of Mendel’s law that it is most un- hkely that the true and honorable blood of the old Angora is lost, for it is sure to reappear in its purity sooner or later, if it has not already, and can be fixed again, if it has not already been fixed, by proper matings. In the beginning the Sultan of Turkey gave a few Angoras to Dr. Jas. B. Davis of South Carolina. Dr. Davis called them ‘‘Cashmeres,’’ and for some years they were called by that name in America, though the Cashmere goat is quite distinct and of no great value in its pres- THE ANGORA AND MILKING GOATS. 349 ent form and has never been bred pure in the United States, so far as the author knows. These goats throve fairly well, and following the custom of the times very great laudation was made of their virtues, among other things that they sheared from four to eight pounds, which sold from $6.00 to $8.00 per pound in Scotland. This, unfortunately, was an exag- geration of about $7.25 per pound, but the goats meekly bore the obloquy as in the Israelitish | days of old, meantime going merrily about their true mission, to subdue and replenish the earth! When Dr. Davis had finished with his goats they were sold, and among the purchasers was Col. Richard Peters, of Georgia. This man proved to be an Angora enthusiast and in turn sent specimens to Texas, California and other places. It is significant that the Angora never be- came prominent anywhere except in Texas, California and Oregon until within compara- tively recent years. There were several reasons for that. The warm, dry climates of the two states were peculiarly suited to the animals and land was cheap there and range limitless. Then there were found in Texas herds of common Mexican goats on which the Angoras could be crossed. This crossing was done on an exten- sive scale and in a short time there sprung into existence great flocks of grade Angora geats, larger and stronger than the pure-bred animals, but possessing a small amount of inferior hair. Further crossing greatly improved the hair, however, and it is not meant to suggest that this 350 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. debasing blood has brought ruin or irretriev- able loss. In truth, the added size and strength of the grades have been a help, and by the eare- ful selection of bucks for a few generations wonders are worked in Angora grade fleeces. This brings us (without mention of further interesting importations) down to the date of the recent exploitation of the Angora. Proved in 1897 to be unrivalled brush exterminators in Iowa, their fame spread, and Angoras have been sent in carload lots to most all the states and territories. When they have been good goats and given good care they have proved profit- able. When they have been common goats, the result of indifferent grade sires on common smooth Mexican goats, they have still proved excellent brush exterminators but have struck their owners with dismay when they had them sheared and tried to sell the fleeces. Within very recent years, however, since the establishment of a record and flock book for the Angoras; with classes at fairs and new impor- tations from Asia and Africa, there is a very great improvement coming over the Angora in- dustry and it is only a question of time when good mohair will be abundant on the American market. When that time comes, curiously enough, it will be in greater demand than it 1s, now that it is rather scarce. Mohair is used in making plush for dress fabrics and yarns. It is the most durable of all fabrics, practically indestructible by wear. Most of the upholstery of railway cars in the United States is said to be made from mohair. THE ANGORA AND MILKING GOATS. 351 What then could a breeder hope to reach in Angora goat breeding? By the use of right sires, for a series of years, by discarding from the flock steadily the worst he ought in time to possess a flock shearing from 4 to 6 pounds of mohair, worth about 45 cents per pound at the present writing. That will pay well. A fleece of 2 to 3 pounds worth 20 cents per pound is discouraging. It takes time, however, to breed out the com- mon goat from the Angoras. To buy any large number of practically pure-bred goats is impos- sible in America. The breeder must have pa- tience, persistence and the habit of extermina- tion. Now what of management? Newly arrived goats from the Southwest are tender and when turned on cold Eastern pastures may suffer considerably for a time. They need a dry shed, open to the south. To this they will come when- ever it threatens rain. They may be fed there some dry forage, clover hay or whatever is available It is not usual to feed them grain, and much grain will cause the kids to be born with small vitality. The fence restraining them may be of woven wire and thus they are easily held in bounds. They must not be confined to too small a pasture else they will famish. Bet- ter let them take their time to the brush exter- mination and make a profit from them as you go along. They will feed upon the leaves of almost every Species of tree and brush, if they can reach them. They will not do much in the way of girdling trees, though they will 352 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. eat the bark from some varieties of trees. They do not much relish hickory. Green briars are dangerous because they sometimes catch and hold fast the little goats till they perish. These should be mown off with a brush scythe and then the goats will keep them down. They do not make a meal of any one article of diet but nibble a few leaves from one shrub, a few from another, then some weeds, some grass, more leaves and so on the day long. They will not thrive on brush alone. They will live well on grass alone but thrive better to have brush to mix with it. They require water. Laurel will poison them if they are given access to it when very hungry. Angoras make good eating. Their flesh is ealled ‘‘venison’’ or ‘‘mutton,’’ according to the state of their respective markets. The An- gora does not have the overpowering odor of the common male goat. They are as dainty as deer in their habits. Offered for sale at our great market centers they sell for considerably less than sheep, 1 to 2 cents per pound less. This condition may improve with time and the elimination of more of the common goat from their blood. Angora goats are not heavy milkers and are not suitable for use as milking goats. Great excellence is seldom attained in two or three di- verse lines of endeavor. The beginner in goat raising in the Hast should fix in his mind a few facts. Angoras are not exceptions to the universal rule in the ani- mal world that food is required for sustenance THE ANGORA AND MILKING GOATS. 353 and growth. They are able, true, to eat foods that other animals neglect, but as a rule brush- wood is not very nutritious and there ought to be some grass in connection. In winter time Angoras deprived of food suffer as sheep would. They can not subsist on coarse browse. They need bright straw, corn fodder, a very lit- tle grain. Then let them browse what they will. They absolutely must have abundant exercise to keep them in health. They love to take it by roaming about and browsing. They must not be crowded. The shed should be roomy and airy and dry under foot. It is absolutely essential that they should have an abundance of fresh air. They are very dainty about what they eat and will not eat any for- age that has been dropped underfoot. Their racks, therefore, should be so made as to hold the forage up. It is useless to lift hay or fod- der from the floor or ground and put it again into the rack; they refuse it. They have the sensitive noses of rabbits. Do not forget the dryness under foot. The yard must not be muddy, and if it becomes so, slightly raised walks of plank or rock should lead from the dry shed to the dry pasture out- side. There should be abundant opportunity of entrance to the shed. It is best to leave the entire south side open, else some quarrelsome individuals will prevent the others from gain- ing ingress. The period of gestation in the Angora is about 150 days.