Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-03-26
Department of Agriculture
Urges Sheep Raising.
WAR AGAINST SCAB
FOR A BETTER RANGE
BREED.
The Farmer Convinced That Chops and
Wool Are Combination That
Will Pay.

America is becoming yearly more of a
sheep-raising and mutton-eating country.
This is due primarily to the initiative OF
the Department of Agriculture, which for
the past ten years has been hammering at
the farmer to raise sheep instead of ex-
porting his surplus grain, and which has
helped him in every way to this end.
One result is that there were reported on
the first of this year over 100000 sheep
on the farms and ranches of the United
States, valued at S127, 1871, S55 as against less
than 3SOOO,O0O in 1892 The receipts at the
Chicago stock yards are reaching upward
every year since 1894, when the yards took
over a million more mutton sheep than
in the previous year. The department is
anxious to impress on the farmer the value
of sheep as one of his farm products, and
1t points out that while the sale of 81, 600
worth of corn takes from the soil $500 worth
of fertility, that is to say the farmer would
have to spend that much in fertilizers to re-
coup the land, the same amount of corn
converted into good mutton and sold at
a higher price than the corn would fetch
takes in the end from the land not over
$50 worth of fertility, and If the flock was
kept for wool alone 1t would not reduce
the value of the land more than three or
four dollars.
There is particular interest attaching to
the sheep-raisng problem just now be-
cause the price of mutton is going up by
leaps, not only in the stores where the
consumer has to buy it, for every one real
ICES this, but in Chicago, where lambs have
recently touched the unprecedented fig
ure of IS per hundred weight, and are now
selling at about SIPS.
Merinos From Spain.
The sheep expert of the Department of
Agriculture is Mr.. George F. Thompson,
editor of the bureau of animal industry,
and in talking with a Star reporter he
gave an interesting exposition of what the
department has been doing in the sheep
line and what it hopes to accomplish.
During the early days in America sheep
were bred primarily for the WOOL and dur
ing recent years we have been importing
annually in addition from $2o,OO0,OOO to $780,
100000 worth of wool. But the wool indus
try in this country has come to the point
where it frequently does not pay to raise
the sheep for the fleece alone. There has,
therefore, been an increasing effort to get
a good combination breed that would live
in large fiocks on the range, furnish good
fleece, and at the same time be good
mutton sheep. This has been a work of
great difficulty. and is by no means yet ac-
complished. The Iowa experiment station
has had DR.. J. w. Kennedy working on
the breeding problem for several years, ex-
perimenting with merinOs for wool, and
Southdowns and Shropshires for mutton,
with a number of other breeds. But up
to date the experiments have not been pro-
ductive of any new fixed breeds which
would have the desired characteristics and
transmit them unchanged to its progeny.
The result is that the farmers of the east
are still combining themselves to the Eng
lish breeds of downs and shires, which are
great meat producers, while the western
ranches depend largely on the old Mexi-
can sheep, which is a descendant of the
fine merinos imported by the Spaniards, but
binI hos hoo of
it has developed characteristics of its own,
and is in a great many respects an Ideal
sheep for the range. The fleece of the
Mexican is made finer and improved by the
introduction of pure merino rams on the
range, and when the strain of merino be-
gins to show too much, making weaker
and more delicate sheep, with very fine
silky WOOL the breed is strengthened by
the Introduction of some coarser wool sheep
like the Oxfords. So the balance is main
tanned.
Sheep Lore on Tap.
This work has now been going on for
many years, and the breeding is likely to
continue along the same lines till the ideal
wool-mutton breed is found. This may oc
cupy a long time, but there has been so
much done in recent years in the hybridiz-
ing of plants and animals that it would
seem anything might be expected to devel-
op in the cross-bred line at any time.
The department has helped the sheep in
dustry all it could and has furnished the
farmers with a great many valuable works
the subject of sheep rearing, feeding
and treating for diseases of one sort or
another till the department has come to be
looked upon by the sheepmen as a source of
much good and great information. The
department has convinced the farmer of
the value of sheep as one of his farm
products, but it is continuing its educa-
tional work and is anxious to impress the
ia with the fact that W still M
over half million dollars annually of
Canadian mutton in spite of the heavy
tariff against it, Therefore, the depart
ment would like to see sheep raised on
all the land that otherwise lays waste
under the farmers hands. 1t has been
said for great many years that any land
is good enough to raise sheep on and that
they thrive on bad lands where other ami
mails would starve. This is true to great
extent but the department would also like
to impress the farmer the fact that
sheep thrive even better on good lands than
they do on bad, and there is no land SO
valuable that it is too good to raise mutton
on. This has been proved by the depart
ment in a long series of costly experiments.
The Pest of Scab.
The great work that the department is
striving for now is the eradication of sheep
scab, which costs the country hundreds of
thousands of dollars annually. The de-
partment commenced a crusade in this di-
rection several years ago. Up to the pres
ent moment there are two states entirely
cleared of scab, and with the right to
quarantine against the rest of the world
and as soon as the national government is
allowed to go into the remaining states
and territories the whole country will be
cleared out and the disease which is the
greatest foe the sheep man has to encounter
will be completely eradicated
A good many nonfarmers may not know
tuSt what sheen Scah is and for thair
benefit it may be well to say that 1t is
simply a sheep parasite that gets under
the skin and causes the wool to fall, COM
pletely running the fleece and eventually
weakening the sheep till 1t dies.
The disease is acutely contagious, and till
a few years ago had spread all over the
United States without check being found
for 1t. Now, thanks to the department.
work it is known to be comparatively
easily cured, the sheep being simply dipped
in "a solution that kills the parasite. Either
tobacco and sulphur or lime and sulphur
are used for this, though there a hundred
different cures" now on the market But
the farmer can make his own cure as a
rule more cheaply than he can buy it, and
the department has taught him by precept
and example how TO clean out his herds
and keep them clean The state of Wyom-
Ing recently passed law allowing the de-
partment's inspectors to go into the state