, 1898-09-07
HOW TO GROW RICH
INVEST YOUR MONEY IN THE
SHEEP BUSINESS IN WYO-
MING.
John E. Leet Tells the Denver Republic
can of the Prosperous Condition OF
the Wool and Mutton Growers OF
This State-Herders Become Own.
ers OF Large Flocks.

wyoming is teeming with prosperi-
ty. Everybody who wants to work has
employment, the range is luxurious,
lands are rapidly rising in price, while
there is a scramble all over the state
tor the legal possession of stock water.
ing stream by people who have al
ready done so, or who are anxious to
& into the sheep business"
So says John L. Leet to the Denver
Republican, after spending three
months in the state.
Everywhere you meet men who were
sheep herders only a few years g at
$50 Del month. but are now ~independ-
emily rich. The Wyoming sheep indus,
try was profitable with wool at Z cents
a pound. The tariff added 5 cents a
pound to the price. which is all addi-
tional profit. At the same time, as
good luck would have it. the appetite
Of mankind has enormously turned to
mutton. as is statistically demonstrate
ed. Consequently flocks of sheep that
but two years g could not be sold for
e1.35 pei head all around. are now in
hot demand at 1925. Yearling ewes are
worth $3.50. Grown ewes 81. And the
top is not yet In sight.
1T Is figured by sheep raisers that a
man can afford to pay the present high
prices in order to get started in the
business, even II certain that wool and
mutton will both decline so per CEN
within the next three years. An annual
increase of 80 per cent upon the num-
Der Of ewes can be counted upon.
Wyoming is a land Of billiards, and
yet the total annual loss averages down
to insignificance. Here and there a herd
Is caught In a trap by bad management
and suffers heavily. One man l know
lost SIS 900 worth of sheep in one storm
two years ago. His surviving herds
made him $685. 0 that year, and his
$4,000 net was enough to keep the wolf
from the door for n season.
Jack Edwards, about whom so much
sheep-cattle war noise used to be made
In the Denver papers, took a merry
jaunt to his native old England last
winter, and while his back was turned
5000 of his sheep, worth over $25, 900,
were allowed to freeze to death in the
mountains near Rawlins. But he had
$1,000 left, which he has recently sold
for 1925 per head all around. Like the
wise man that he is he has put this
money into mines.
Heretofore it has been the rule not
to feed the sheep anything at all in
Wyoming. no matter how terrible the
winter. Their hardness is something
amazing. When the snow owe the
grass they live on the tops of hat SYM
Dol of desolation, the sage brush.
Sometimes they are buried five feet out
of sight by a snow drift. II the herder
gets around within a week and digs
them out, or the snow melts or blows
away within that time, they are all
right. On these occasions. which are
rare, the herder gets out of his house
wagon after the blizzard and finds
where they are buried by the holes
which their breath makes in the 10Y
When a snow partly melts and then
freezes into a crust that continues for
weeks there is danger. This can be mel
by scattering corn upon the snow. The
sheep can live on a combination of corn
and snow. But to save them with hay,
water is required.
LAS. winter thousands of sheep were
saved along the high and cold plateaus
Of the Union Pacific by shipping in corn
from Nebraska. In Central Wyoming.
with its low altitude. this has e.
been necessary. But even there the
large fiockmasters are commencing to
raise alfalfa on irrigated strips of land
as an insurance against storm accidents
to their herds. In case it is not needed
It is used probably by feeding wethers
before topping them of for market on
the spring grass.
"For four months in the winter sheep
can be held any distance from a water
supply for there is then snow enough
for them They eat it, and thus water
themselves. A diet Of snow and sage
brush Is good and wonderfully economi-
cal But for the other eight months