388 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



and desultory manner let me tell you why we should not, and why, 

 comparatively speaking, there is no kind of stock which will pay 

 better for Maine farmers to raise than sheep. 



In the first place, there is no stock so easily and cheaply kept as 

 sheep ; and with a season like the present, when the drought has 

 parched out pastures, the grasshoppers have overrun our fields, 

 and in some sections almost devoured every green thing, and when 

 hay promises to be $25 a ton and scarce at that', it is quite an item 

 to have a kind of stock that is easily and cheaply kept, even if their 

 profits are not large, providing they are sure, as I claim to be the 

 fact with sheep. 



Wool, in my section, is now about forty-two cents a pound, and 

 our sheep average about three pounds per head. Lambs sell for 

 from $2.50 to $3.00 apiece. It is easj'' to thus figure the annual 

 profit. Compare this with the cost of keeping a cow, which is 

 equal to seven or eight sheep, or of keeping a horse or colt which 

 makes no such return, and you can easily see the comparative cost 

 and value. 



There is no kind of stock which get their living so early in the 

 spring and so late in the fall as sheep. They go out with the 

 early bare ground and do not come to the barn till the snows of 

 winter have robed the fields and the face of nature in its wintry 

 covering. It has been said, and with much truth, that the farmer 

 pitches into the barn for six months and pitches out the other six 

 months of the year. But it is not to the sheep, for they do not 

 average over half that time at the barn. And the care necessary 

 to be bestowed upon them is very small compared with other stock. 

 A foddering twice or three times a day is all they need of labor for 

 the whole winter except a few days in lambing time, when, to be 

 successful, a few hours must be devoted to their care. Compare 

 this with any other animal kept in the farm-yard, and see the great 

 dilference, all in favor of the sheep. 



Then again, sheep are of positive value instead of detriment to 

 any pasture or field upon which they feed. They eat plants in the 

 pasture which other stock refuse, and thus act as pruners for the 

 dairy pasture, if turned in occasionally. And if you have a mow- 

 ing field overrun with weeds, what so good as a flock of sheep for 

 a few days to cleanse it. But their great value upon a field or 

 pasture arises from the fact that they remove nothing from the soil, 

 that is, they do not impoverish it. On the contrary, they leave it 

 richer than they find it. If we wish to recuperate an old turf- 



