78 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



do so as long as there is a good supply of milk in their udders. 

 After the lamb is born then our method is like this : There 

 should be two or three pens for lambs of different ages. We 

 put them by themselves and then begin to give them, gradually 

 at first, a little more variety of food. We also do the same 

 thing with the old ewes. We begin to give them a little richer 

 feed, so as to increase the ewe's milk, not only to increase the 

 quantity, but so she will give it up more readily. Then, too, 

 we always pay careful attention to this fact : For a week, after 

 the little lamb is born, we milk her out every day, clean. That 

 should be done particularly in cases where the lamb is unable 

 to take it all. If we do not want to do that, if we have got a 

 big lamb that can take it, we catch the old ewe and put this lamb 

 on, and he will usually clean her out good. Generally we will 

 have half a dozen that we are able to use for that purpose. You 

 see if a ewe gives more milk than the lamb can take, of course, 

 the milk is not all taken out, and that interferes with the length 

 of time that the ewe stays in milk. It is an easy matter, in such 

 cases, to arrange so as to have lambs that will run up and clean 

 out the ewe. Of course, there are good reasons why the lamb 

 should take what it can after being born. It is the natural 

 method, and a lamb needs that for medicinal reasons. It does 

 not do to take them away too quick, certainly not for three or 

 four days, as it is very apt to kill them. Our ewes are such 

 large milkers that the little lambs almost never can take it all, 

 and so we have a surplus to use for others. We find that fact 

 a strong element in our success. We try to increase the milk- 

 giving habit of the ewes, because we want to hurry that little 

 lamb along into quick, fat mutton. The lambs, too, must have 

 a chance to be by themselves. We cannot hurry them along 

 as fast as it is desirable, we cannot go to that extreme just on 

 the mother's milk alone. So in some corner of the barn we 

 pen off a little pen — not too little — in some place where it is 

 easier for the lamb to get into it than anywhere else, making 

 it where it is natural for them to get to it, and placing it where 

 the ewes are all around it. The pen should be made with 

 panels wide apart, or pickets spread from one another, so that 

 the lambs can run through easily. I find that our ewes cannot 

 follow the lambs into these little pens if we have the pickets ' 

 about seven inches apart. -These little pens should be placed 

 so that the lambs can run back to their mothers and placed so 



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