1906. J DISCUSSION. 65 



Dr. Smead. Worms or grubs in the head do not kill one 

 sheep where they are supposed to kill fifty. That may sound 

 like a strange assertion, but the fact is that grubs in the head 

 are not a dangerous foe to sheep except in locations where the 

 gad-fly is extremely numerous. Grub in the head is some- 

 times due to a lack of grub in the stomach. Where there 

 is no attempt to provide the proper variety of food, or where 

 there is an attempt to winter sheep upon timothy hay, or 

 where the flock is kept in such a way so that they are liable to 

 contract colds and weak lungs, then if the sheep have an ex- 

 cessive number of grubs in the head they will frequently 

 destroy the sheep. I have never yet found a sheep that was 

 actually killed by grubs in the head. I mean from that as the 

 direct cause. I have always found some other contributing 

 cause. In localities where the gad-fly is numerous it is well to 

 use some of the various remedies to keep away the fly. 



Question. What is your opinion of ensilage as a food for 

 sheep ? 



Dr. Smead. Aly sheep eat ensilage every winter. In this 

 climate sheep need a food of that kind in winter, and I have 

 learned by experience that ensilage will supply that need. 

 It is not well to feed too much of it. Ensilage should be fed 

 in the proportion of about two pounds of ensilage to a hundred 

 pounds of sheep. With a sheep weighing 150 pounds, three 

 pounds of ensilage per day is plenty. 



jMr. Platts. Mr. Chairman, we have had lots of instruc- 

 tion how to take care of sheep, how to protect them from dis- 

 ease, etc., but the trouble with us in Connecticut is our in- 

 ability to protect them from dogs. It is simply dogs and 

 nothing but dogs. I live in a town in the southern part of the 

 State, and when I was a boy sixty or seventy years ago nearly 

 every farmer had sheep. At that time I rarely ever knew of 

 sheep to be killed by dogs. At the present time, so far as my 

 knowledge goes, there are no sheep kept within ten miles of 

 me. Until within a very short time it has been a continuous 



Agr. — 5 



