1907.] SHEEP BREEDING. 247 



and nearly all of them are twin lambs. Now how does that 

 compare with your profits on potatoes and on other crops 

 which you raise in this vicinity, for a market for which you 

 depend upon city consumption? How does that compare with 

 your profits on butter, cheese or anything else ? I want to tell 

 you away up over it all is the profit that you can make from 

 growing choice sheep on these Connecticut farms. 



I have no particular breed to advocate. There is no best 

 breed, because there are many methods of breeding. One 

 breed may be best adapted for one purpose and another for 

 another, so that I cannot tell you what breed is best. Then I 

 would not undertake to do it if I knew until I got pretty well 

 acquainted with the man that wanted the information. We 

 all have our likes and dislikes, and what might be best and 

 most profitable for one man might not be at all suitable for his 

 neighbor. These little fancies that we have are a very im- 

 portant part of our being, and we cannot ignore them. Some 

 men like a horse that will go a mile in two minutes and a 

 quarter, and others are well satisfied with one that has a three 

 minute gait. So it is with sheep. Some men want one thing 

 and some men another. But, if I get well acquainted with a 

 man and find out what his likes and dislikes are, then I have 

 no hesitation in expressing my opinion to him as to the best 

 breeds of sheep, and as to what is best for him or for his farm. 



If you are breeding sheep for hothouse lambs, the large, 

 plain, coarse tailed merino is a pretty fair breed because there 

 are characteristics of that breed that make them adapted to 

 that particular line of breeding. Those lambs must go to 

 market about this time of year, from now until the twentieth 

 of February ; and the large, thick-fleshed, massive breeds of 

 sheep cannot be bred in the times of year when these lambs 

 will go to market. Right in this connection let me call your 

 attention to an important fact. You cannot produce wool and 

 mutton at the same time. Perhaps in the history of breeding 

 there never has been anyone who accomplished more under the 

 conditions that then existed than Albert Buckley, who began 

 away back two hundred and forty years ago. He bred horses, 

 cattle and sheep, but his chief work was with sheep. He was 

 a mysterious old man. I have been amused sometimes in 

 reading the early history of those old breeders, and how they 

 quarreled, and what they thought about Buckley. He left 



