The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1875-07-02
SHEEP RAISING.
Ten Reasons why HI WIFI Pay
best in Kansas.
Pardee Butler says in the Atchison


Champion:
Wool growing should be the leading
agricultural interest of Kansas. | shall
arrange numerically my reasons for
saying so.
/. It bears transportation better than
any other agricultural product. have
in a former paper called attention to
this. 1t costs no more to take a pound
of wool to market than a pound of corn
but when we get them there the wool
is worth so cents and the corn only two
cents.
3. 1t costs less to stock farm with
sheep than with any other live stock.
3. Ifwell taken care of they multiply
faster than any other farm stock except
hogs.
4. The returns come in regularly and
every year, whereas it takes four years
to fit q beef steer for market. and one
year and half for hogs.
3. The keeping of sheep requires less
grain than the keeping of any other
kind of farm stock and we are now
passing through the throes of most
bitter experience, that the raising of
grain is not always safe business.
G. The keeping of sheep is a safe bust
ness, provided always it is in the hands
of men who understand it, and who are
vigilant and thorough in their man
agement.
Z. This country pre-eminently and in
4 most marvellous manner is fitted for
raising sheep. They need high, dry,
good water; and are less injured than
any other stock by pastures dry, bare,
and parched with drouth. In winter
they will stand intense cold, provided
always they are kept in dry, clean
place, and their feeces are not satura-
ted with snow and rain.
8. In raising wool we are just as
near to market as we want to be.
The transportation of wool costing
so little that we do not feel it, as a
burden.
8. There is no probability that
the market for good wool will ever
be oYerstocked.
10. It is unanimously admitted
that there is no stock kept on farm
that is so favorable to keeping up
its fertility as sheep.
do not think it would be best to
buy a flock of sheep in Missouri.
They should be bought where the
keeping of sheep has been made a
speciality. Otherwise, men would
be liable to get flock of sheep with
long legs, thin light quarters, thin
fieeces, unquiet in their habits, Civ
en- to jumping fences, and which,
when kept in large flocks, would
pine away and become unhealthy.
My Judgment would be that bet
ter quality of sheep could be found
| in Northern Iowa, or Wisconsin.
DF1f or10h 6afoflo RI hnlnnOr IN
| the purposes of this paper.
TO men who are discouraged with
the calamities of the last two years
| fer. All the cattle that could be
spared in the older settled portions
of Atchison county have been taken
out on to the prairies west of US,
and are doing we'll in spite of the
grasshoppers. Flocks of sheep
could have been treated in the same
way. Last fall farmers sowed largely
of rye and this furnished feed for
cattle and horses whenever the
ground was bare. A flock of sheep
could have been wintered In the
same way. Blue grass would have
served equally well. The grasshop-
pers did not begin their destruction
on this rye and blue grass until the
cattle were fairly out on the prairies.
Now it is utterly destroyed. 1t
might have been plowed under at
the first. I have done it at the last,
but it was after the grasshoppers
had taken all they wanted. might
have made hay of my rye if had
cut it before the grasshoppers had
reached 1t. Now the ground is ready
| to De planted with corn which viii
make fodder, admitting that il does
not make marketable corn. So far
as am raising stock am able to
save myself; so far as am raisig
grain, am dead broke"
A number of farmers of moder-
ate means might unite together and
buy one or two thousand head of
sheep in Wisconsin. They would
employ four months IN bringing
them here, corraling them every
night in portable corral. They
should be kept as much as possible
ON the open prairie. Sheep left Ito
themselves will travel of their own
accord six miles per day, and this
should be q days travel. All posi-
BILE means shOuld be taken to keep
them in healthy condition. Arrived
in this country they might be divid-
led among the parties who furnished
the money, each owner wintering
his own sheep. Then ia the spring,
after ahearing, they conld be