LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 149 



I doubt whether the very able and successful Professor of Agriculture, who is 

 with us to-day, can do so. Bat if the State Legislature will make the appro- 

 priation to carry out the experiments necessary to know, I think in a few 

 years he will be able to give us a definite and s^atisfactory answer. We ought 

 to know just how much it will cost for summer pasture and winter keep. My 

 farm is a strong clay loam, and equal to any in the State to produce hay or 

 for grazing. 



In the spring of 1878, I bad a flock of sheep which numbered two hundred. 

 The salable wethers had been sold out the fall previous. These sheep were 

 of no particular breed, were medium wool and good size. I summered and 

 wintered this flock, and after shearing sold the increase and the wool, which 

 produced $670, or $3.25 for each head for the whole flock, and left the flock 

 in as good condition and of equal value to what they were the spring before. 

 The winter feed of this flock was twenty tons of good timothy hay and the 

 wheat straw from twenty acres. In August of 1878 I purchased forty steers, 

 which were one year old in the spring of that year, at a cost of $400. Gave 

 them first class pasture until feeding time, and then fed them forty tons of 

 equally good hay and the straw from forty acres, a part of which was wheat 

 and a part oat. 



I sold the steers on the first of April for twenty dollars a head, or $800 for 

 the lot. The steers were cheaply purchased and well sold, sold for more than 

 I considered them worth, otherwise they would not have been sold at this sea- 

 son of the year. 



Not taking into account the pasture for the sheep from April 1st to August 

 1st, the account of feed and profit from same would stand as for each ten 

 dollars from the cattle, give thirty-three and a half dollars for the sheep. 



From this experience and general observation from year to year, I am con- 

 vinced that the winter keep of a steer coming two years old is equal to the 

 winter keep of ten sheep, which will average one hundred pounds to the head. 



Sheep require a great amount of pasture, how much to each sheep I do not 

 know. Often they have been pastured on fallows and partly cleared land. 



I can carry a steer to the acre on my old pastures, with the use of the rowen 

 for an equal number of acres. I always allow my cattle and sheep to pasture 

 my well-set timothy meadows in the fall, and often turn my sheep on in the 

 spring at the rate of two or three to the acre. This would usually be called 

 bad farming, but careful observation on my farm does not so teach me. 



I believe it will take as much pasture for five sheep as for one steer, hut I 

 do not know. If my estimates are correct, it will take three acres of pasture 

 and hay land for each ten sheep. If ten sheep produce in wool and increase 

 thirty dollars each year, and this I believe is about the average of mine for a 

 number of years past, it will give a gross sum of ten dollars for each acre, not 

 counting the interest on the capital invested in the sheep. This seems a small 

 sum, but we may consider that it is as much as we often receive for an acre of 

 corn, of oats, and sometimes wheat. The investment in labor on the sheep is 

 much less, very much than on the grain crop. I think the net product is 

 better from sheep than any other branch of agriculture, except dairy cows; 

 with them a large part of the value of the product is in the labor. 



I have had some experience with sheep for the last thirty-three years. I 

 commenced clearing the farm upon which I now live in 1850. The next year 

 I purchased a flock of sheep after shearing, and pastured them in the newly 

 cleared or partly cleared land. I often bought whole flocks which had run 

 down at low prices. These I would turn to pasture and usually commence in 



