304 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



TJie bot-fly, (Estrus ovis, is sometimes annoying and dan- 

 gerous. Tarring the noses of the sheep is a safe preventive. 

 Wlien sheep show signs of being tormented by the grub, a 

 little snuff, or pepper, or tobacco-smoke, blown into the nos- 

 tril, will sometimes cause it to sneeze out the offending 

 worm. 



PROFITS. 



In speaking of the profits of sheep-husbandry, and of 

 those who earn them, we write of farmers who are disposed 

 to be careful in their farming, prudent in their expenses, and 

 painstaking with their stock. 



Nothing can be profitably produced from any farm without 

 labor, care, anxiety, and personal attention. But keeping a 

 few sheep to roam at large through the summer, without 

 overlooking them when in pasture, and watching them at 

 the lambing season, carelessly and irregularly feeding them 

 in winter, or allowing them to pick up a scanty subsistence 

 from the refuse stock of the barn, is not sheep-husbandry. 

 It is too common for farmers thus to treat their sheep : this 

 will not pay, and farmers will find that it will not. Instead 

 of better treatment and greater attention, by which a good 

 profit is assured, they are too apt to abandon sheep as a 

 profitless animal. There is no animal which rewards its 

 owner more generously for the food, shelter, and care ex- 

 tended to it than the sheep. The profits derived from sheep 

 come in three or four different modes of farming : first, 

 where the wool-crop is the prime consideration. This, 

 however, with us now' is almost entirely giving way to the 

 others, where the production of meat is first, and the wool 

 auxiliary. 



The fine-wools, in 1875, were only 16,507, yielding 77,357 

 pounds ; while the others were 42,686, giving 129,578 pounds ; 

 and the proportion of coarse-wools is still larger in 1878. 



The second mode of sheep management is that of stall- 

 feeding for mutton ; a third, that of raising early lambs, 

 partly stall-fed, never going to grass ; and, fourth, raising 

 lambs coming forward to go to grass with their dams, and 

 sold from the pastures. 



At the present time the fine-woolled sheep are probably 

 only about one-third of all : they are out-numbered by the 

 coarse-wools in every county. In 1875 the total value of the 



