The progressive farmer., 1901-11-19
Correspondence.
sHkEP IN THE SOUTH.



the Fault of Couutry-sheep Will Cooper
ate With all farming Industry Food
in Winner Will be a suecess-Cheap Wool
A Mighty Industry.
Correspondence of The Progressive Farmer.
It may have been noticed that
these chapters have been written
with view that sheep will require
nearly as much winter hay or trough
ness" and grain in the Southern as
in the Northern States. wrote this
way for two reasons.
Ioid not want in any way to un-
der rate the cost of keeping sheep
and thus mislead any one 80 engage
in the business under the deceptive
impres ion that lit costs n"thing
much so keep sheep and one will get
rich at is directly" While this may
prove largely true in the lower
South, yet IN the. North part of the
South, as Vlrg ma, Kentucky, Mis-
souri,, eto, it will b. decidedly safer
to provide four months winttr feed.
Also, L wrote SO because L believe
that it will be found more profitable
than not, to house sheep, especially
at nj sht and feed them from silOs
and green out food, (''sOil them'O
grain roots, etc, during almost the
VIII le IN yards and buildings so as
to save most OF their manure for the
fertlliz T mixture in the compost
barn, as before recommended, be
cause | regard that from this feature
of the business can arise at least
one-fourth of the entir profits which
should accrue from the sheep indus
try 10 the owners.
How ever, setting this aside so as to
view the business for the Central
and lower South 1t becomes far more
entlclng
FIRST, 1 will refer specially to the
many failures in sheep business in
some of the South, and first from
dogs. OF course d rgs are natural
en- my to she' p and thousands of
dollars have been lost and sheep men
more or less discouraged because of
dogs in the South, far more so in the
South than in the North. Mostly it
has been from mixed and mean
blJoded d rgs that the mischief comes.
The N"rth protects it's sheep prop
erty from ngs by heavy taxation on
When farmers and planters take
up the sheep business with enterprise
ami intelig, nJe as a business thet
the law makers of all parties will
heed the request for protection f
the business from the dogs and she,
will not at al be likely to do 80 till
then.
Until then the safest plan, and not
so very expensive, ia to provided If,
fenced eff acre or two, either with
or with ut d sneep barn inside, IL
which the sheep should be enclosed
every night.
1T ha- been as erted that sneep
will not thrive nor do we'll at all il
the low er > Duth. This assertion do
not nor cannot believe because ]
have seen sh ep living and doing
well in &c Ch and every one Of the
Cuff States and not in one single
kept IN Texas-dId l SCI
those sheep being kept fed and at
tended with that care and attention
and industry that | am certain a.
taches TO real scientific sheep hus
bar dry in the ,uth and which l
think should be applied to it in order
that it shall bee. me a great indus
trial bu-lness on equal footing with
other regions of our country and t.
that extent which the SDutht IT.
country pr mise4 by it's climate, sol
and vegetation.
shall never give up to the neces
sity for these failures until l see
them fail from the standpoint and ]
have never seen 1t so yet.
This il not saying but that there
arr,-as in all other regions, s,-lOcal
places where it would surely be I'm
vie TO attempt TO keep sheep, but
these are comparatively few and far
between when the vast region of th-
South Is considered.
In {, r.n,r chapters wrote of tn
business In connection with cot on
growing only. This was from the
fact THAT realize cotton as the great
chief ind strial product of the larger
pa, t of. the South and purposely in
tended 10 compare and measure up
the great industrial products of