The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-10-29

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will fall away in condition before
they will eat dry hay, but where
they can get it they will eat silage
with meal on it about as readily as
in winter. During q very wet spell
it answers the same purpose. Some
times when a flock becomes appar-
emily sickly on pasture and one
hardly kno VS. what's wrong, If taken
up and fed one 80 three weeks from
the silo, a complete change TO good
health may result. Tobacco powder,
sassafras, worm wood, boneset, tur-
pentine, in fact all medicines and
G )ndiments can be administered to
a part or all the flock with the meal
on the sllage, and worm and other
diseases exterminated in this way at
any time and enough saved in one
year to pay for a silo and silage.
Is is better than ga change to
fresh pasture" we hear so much
about. The South Gan have this
"ohange" for sheep more readily
than it can be had on the heavy
sward lands of the North or in the
pastoral regions of the West.
Several times I have cut, dried and
put away weeds and plants and given
them TO my sheep in winter and was
not q little surprised TO see them eat
most all of such, and il set me 80
thinking. Turn a flock of sheep into
a large pasture and they will devour
a greater variety Of the grasses,
weeds, sprouts and leaves than will
any other stock.
Sheep will proftably consume the
improved grasses and grains and
grow large and fat just the same as
improved Durham cattle will, but
even then they love to hunt about
and get q peculiar bite of weed, leaf,
sprout and zen TO use such as a kind
of oondiment, with as much delight
and discretion rs the genus homo
uses pepper, alspice, Gloves, lemon
peel, citron, etc.
If sheep use the great variety of
weeds and sprouts in summer so
much to their advantage, they should
be equally as good for them in win
ter. Therefore I suggest that they
have such as a oondiment. / know
that word belongs rather to human
food, but sheep are the most lovely
of all field animals and deserve a
nice bite under a big word once in d
while.
These might be dried like hay and
given to them occasionally. Or a
small silo might be filed with the
kind of weeds sheep eat in summer
in preference TO blowing such under
or letting them seed, and feed them
n or two ratiOns q week from is.
Such weeds are as hard to cure as hay
but easily preserved in the silo. This
kind of treatment is far better than
TO prescribe drugs after the sheep
get sick and we wonder what's the
matter with them.
A good shepherd should be some
thing of a scientist, and to begin on
should know that sheep possess a
peculiar physical organization. They
produce q large fleece annually, as
we'll as meat and bones, the elements
of which is the same as their hoofs
and their bones. They do not need
TO have horns, but they must have
hoofs. So that which produces
horns might as we'll be grown by
them into wool.
The improved sheep of to-day has
been made to weigh six times as
much as in former centuries, and
others grow aeeces of wool ten times
as heavy and valuable as formerly.
The end is not yet.
The digestive apparatus, (the fac
tory that does this is surely COM
pick in it's organization, hence the
variety of food their nature requires.
The habits of the improved sheep
may not require the same elements
as of old in the same proportion, but
I often think they are more likely to
be healthy if they can get part of
them in their salt box and other
parts in their pastures and in their
fodder or "roughness," then they
would be less troubled with diseases
that result in worms and consump-
tions.
In a word, I would give far more
attention TO, and depend more upon
Ehis man Of nrnSorrinn Tho hnnl l.