St. Paul daily globe., 1891-07-11
SHEEP RAISING.
How the Dark Side Can Be
Avoided.

Avoided.
A correspondent of the National
Stockman and Farmer tells how much
of the dark side of sheep husbandry
may be avoided. Most of it is in the
management. He says:
THE average farmer of this country
never has given sheep-growing the
thought that he has given his cattle and
horses; neither have the sheep as rule
been cared for in any degree equal to
that of the horse and the COW.
Some years farmer will keep
sheep, and other years he will
not. Consequently but poor ac
commodations are provided for them.
Barren hills and brush lots are con-
sheep pasture; and the open yard, with
shed to run under. pleuty good enough
for winter quarters; with clover hay
Gf they have it) or ever timothy hay, or
straw. .all that will be needed for winter
food. with perhaps no water provided
at all. Now this looks like very Door
provisions for sheep, and yet hun
dreds of farmers all over the
Eastern and Middle states keep sheep
with no better accommodations and
food than the case mentioned. These
farmers generally live in neighbOr-
hood where there are several enterpriS-
ing farmers who keep sheep as they
shou uld be kept, and make money by so
doing. Their neighbors soon discover
this, and they conclude to get into it,
and commence by purchasing flock
of anything that can be bought cheap,
use any kind of ram they can find,
feed and care for them accordingly, and
u n,Ir, Il 70 NArf
1t is true that the best flockmaSter in
the world will occasionally lose a sheep
by death, and occasionally lamb will
die in spite OF the very best care and
feeding, but this wholesale loss of
lambs, or loss of the breeding flock, as
mentioned by Mr.. Farr in speaking of
the dark side. is caused by improper
shelter during the inclement part of the
year, improper food or improper man.
agement of the flock. Now. this can
hardly be called dark feature of the
business. Call it bad management, and
done with it.
There are no more dark sides to the
sheep business than any other branch
of farming; in fact not so many as there
are in breeding horses and cattle.
Horses die just as frequently as sheep
when properly cared for, and have
scores of blemishes that impair
their usefulness that sheep never
have. When horse or cow dies
we feel the loss. We can lose several
sheep to equal one good horse or COW
The trouble with too many farmers is
that they start into the sheep business
without having any particular object in
view, frequently buy larger tiocks than
they have Stabiing for, and as a neceS
sity half-feed and care for them, and
then grnmble because they don't pay
large profits.
The sheep business, like dairying, is
business that cannot be made success
full by picking it up one year and drop
ping it the next. 1t is business that
needs study, and. like dairying, the de-
tails of it cannot be learned i'll one year.
1t is the man who goes into it and sticks
to it who wins; and he cannot be breed
ing for mutton one year and wool the
next, neither can he keep his flock on
the feast-or-famine plan during the
winter and raise a crop of healthy lambs
in the spring.
A breeding flock in order to produce
we'll must be fed well by being fur
nished class of food during their preg-
nant state that will supply all of the
tissues of the body, and at the same time
develop the f9tus, or either the mother
or the lamb stands but poor chance of
going through the trial of parturitiOn.
If every flock owner could be made to
realize this fact we would hear
but little complaint about lambs
dying at time of birth; neither
would we hear men complaining that
their ewes had no milk for their lambs.
The science of breeding and science of
feeding are the two great things for
flock owners to study in order to make
sheep breeding highly successful. A
well-bred sheep poorly cared for is no
better than a scrub. But when the
high grade is fed and cared for in all
intelligent manner, then, and then only,
is sheep breeding by the average
farmer made highly successful.