Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1890-01-30
TICKS ON SHEEP.

Done Valuable Hints fog Keeping tho
Flock Free from These Fests.
The English mutton herds Of sheep
and their grades and crosses are much
more liable to be troubled by ticks than
Merinos. says Joseph Harris in tho
American Agriculturist- Every En-
glish farmer dips his sheep two or three
times year to kill ticks. Scores of
preparations~are sold for this purpose,
and men go round from farm to farm
with convenient apparatus for dipping
the sheep, and do the work at SO much
head.
As to the relative merits of mutton
sheep and Merinos much may be said.
But that is not our purpose at this time;
what we wish to say now is. if you are
keeping any open-wooled sheep of any
kind and have not dipped them yet, do
not let another week pass without doing
SO. 1t is cruel to the sheep and a great
loss to you. We once visited farmer
in Maine who had given up Merinos and
was keeping grade Cotswolds. ST feed
them WE'LL" he said, 'sbut they do not
seem to thrive. It does not pay to keep
Merinos for wool alone, and then grade
Cotswolds are not going to prove profit
able. I think shall have to give up
This was in the winter. We caught
one of the sheep and on opening the
fleece found it literally alive and black
with ticks. We have found many such
instances elsewhere. Before winter sets
kill all the ticks, and again, two or three
weeks later, to kill the young ticks
Matched out from the eggs laid previous
IN, tho fret dinniuD Thia will offock.
ually cure the evil. The ticks are easily
killed. A favorite dip is made from to-
bacco stems or from cheap tobacco. We
have for many years used a dip made OF
a pound of soap and pint of crude car
bolic acid to fifty gallons of water. The
only point to be observed is to keep the
mixture we'll thinned. Dissolve the
soap in q gallon or more of boiling water
and add the carbolio acid and stir thor
oughly. Then mix with water in the
proportion named above. In dipping let
some trusty man have hold of the head
of the sheep and see that none of the
mixture gets into IT,, mouth, or nos
trils, or eyes. Each sheep should be
held in the dip not less than half a
minute.
A dip that will probably be more con-
veniently made is mixture of soap and
kerosene, or skinned milk and kero-
sene. Take two gallons of kerosene
and a gallon of milk. Put them in
churn and churn rapidly for ten or fif-
teen minutes. If the milk is boiling hot
when put in the churn with the kero-
sene it will be all the better. When
thoroughly churned put two gallons of
the emulsion in the dipping tub or bar
rel with twenty gallons of water, stir it
up, and commence dipping the sheep.
The reserved gallon of emulsion will be
needed to make more dip to keep the
tub or barrel full enough to cover the
sheep. In our own trials we used soap
instead of milk. Boil gallon of water.
and put in it a pound of soap, and stir
till it is dissolved. Then add two gall
Ions of kerosene and churn as before,
or, if you have good syringe or force
pump, churn it with that for ten min
utes, or till all the oil is ''cut" and the
emulsion is complete.
It is not improbable that with SO much
soap as above recommended the dip may
need to be little stronger-say one
gallon of the emulsion to eight gallons
of water. We like to use plenty of soap
to avoid any possible injury to the wool
A pound of white he11ebore powder to
each two gallons of soap and kerosene
emulsion makes a dip that finishes the
ticks in a few minutes. The dip with
out the hellebore will do the work. You
will find no live ticks the next morning,
and there is some reason to believe that
it will kill the eggs also. But it is al
ways safer and better to give a second
dipping in two or three weeks, and be
sure you dip every sheep in the flock.