1907. ] SHEEP BREEDING. 249 



you will find those breeds most suitable for that purpose. I 

 take it that where you are so situated that you can grow lambs 

 for the summer market, for these large hotels and pleasure 

 resorts, that they will be a most profitable branch of breeding. 



Now just for a little time I want to talk about some of 

 the ways of caring for sheep. We used to think that if the 

 sheep had plenty of straw they could work down the straw 

 stack better than anything else, and that when we fed them 

 grain there was nothing so good as corn. But let me tell you, 

 brother farmers, that you cannot make good mutton on wheat 

 straw, timothy hay, or on a diet of mixed hay or corn. You 

 cannot make it that way. I have eaten a good many pieces of 

 mutton, but if you are going to create a demand for high- 

 class mutton you must produce the kind that people want, and 

 which brings a high price, this large, juicy, sweet meat that is 

 better than any other meat that ever was put on the table. 

 Last Thanksgiving I supposed, of course, that we would hav^ 

 turkey, the regulation turkey. That is always considered a 

 dignified way of setting the table for Thanksgiving. I asked 

 the good Missis about it, and she says, I guess we will have a 

 lamb roast. Well, do you know, that when I sat there at the 

 table on Thanksgiving Day and ate that sweet, juicy meat, I 

 could not help but feel that it was far and away better than 

 turkey, the usual dish for a Thanksgiving celebration. I have 

 eaten mutton in the old country, and I never tasted better mut- 

 ton than we have grown right on our own farm. Those sheep 

 were fed in a way to develop the best class of meat, sweet, 

 solid, juicy mutton. That is the way they were fed in the 

 first place, and then carefully taken care of afterwards. 



Now just for the sake of an example, let us take a flock of 

 sheep at lambing time, and if we have been judicious in feed- 

 ing and caring for that flock, w^e will have no trouble at this 

 time of year, and we will have no loss. You can go to bed at 

 nine or ten o'clock in the evening and sleep with a clear con- 

 science, and without any fear that there may be loss or trouble 

 in the barn. And when you go out in the morning you may 

 find a half dozen little fellows running about playing with 

 each other as happy as they can be. But in order to bring 

 about this happy condition of things, you want to begin long 

 before the lambing time sets in. I know from experience that 

 there is nothing so discouraging as having a condition in the 



