492 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



of sires or ewes for flock addition that will probably produce lambs of the 

 same high type. This enables you to properly found a flock and keep it 

 making rapid progress upward in quality. 



Sheep properly fed will be fully developed, and the good individual well 

 developed is par excellence. To assist nature must be your desire and not 

 to work against her. When a sheep or any other animal does not receive 

 more than enough for each day to simply replace the strength which is 

 expended in living and exercise it becomes "stunted" or is too small and 

 lacks bloom. 



Good feeding does not necessarily mean a heavy allowance of fat-pro- 

 ducing food such as corn, etc., but in breeding sheep it implies plenty of 

 food w^hich will build up muscle and bone and tend to growth, not fat. 



Oats, bran, linseed cake, clover hay, etc., have helped bring our im- 

 proved breeds of sheep to their present high standard of perfection and 

 will assist us in raising this standard still higher. 



Careful methods of breeding give us the proper material to work on 

 and good feeding enables us to assist nature in developing it fully. If 

 your sheep lack in breeding, the same amount of feed will not give you 

 as large returns as it otherwise would, and on the other hand it doesn't 

 matter how well bred a ram or ewe may be if it isn't properly fed it will 

 never be as strictly first-class as it might have been. Therefore we say 

 that the shepherd must have a thorough knowledge of the best blood of 

 the breed he is caring for and know how to feed for full development. 



The flock that is well and properly fed has very few ailments so when 

 you learn to feed well you have torn out a number of pages in your "doc- 

 tor book." The sheep's system which is properly nourished by clean food 

 will rarely get out of order and that covers it all. Coarse, half-spoiled 

 old hay and ice-cold water in the winter time would nearly give anything 

 indigestion, and ix)ssibly chronic, too, but that would not be good feed- 

 ing. A barren old pasture or one with stale grass and dirty water might 

 not make nice fat lambs in the summer, nor you couldn't expect it to. 

 Bred ewes in the winter placed in a roomy well-ventilated shed, bedded 

 with clean, dry straw, and with a small allowance of oats and bran, and 

 well-cured clover and corn-fodder for rough feed will thrive well and 

 produce heavy fleeces and a good crop of strong lambs. If lambs in the 

 early summer are turned on a patch of rape, kale or some good fresh 

 feed they w-ill thrive and be a credit to any farm. 



There are always two ways to do a thing, and you want to be sure that 

 your sheep are bred, fed and managed in the right way. 



NECESSARY PRECAUTION IN THE LAMBING FOLD. 



Should any ewe die, abort or strain after lambing she should at once 

 be removed to a safe distance and the wood-work and pen it occupied 

 must be thoroughly disinfected with carbolic acid or other disinfectant, 

 and all the litter, etc., 'burned. It is also wise to have in the lambing 

 fold a tub of live lime with an empty tub and shovel alongside. All cleans- 

 ings, etc., should at once be placed in the tub and a shovelful of fresh 

 lime thrown over it. By this simple process the lambing fold is quite 



