528 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



sheep. I will not here tell how to treat the ewes; if you are sufH- 

 ciently interested to go into this thing write the zoological depart- 

 ment of the bureau of animal husbandry, at Washington, for advice. 

 They are actively experimenting and studying this very thing right 

 now, but treat the ewes any way. It will pay well. I have gathered 

 evidence that ewes treated made their lambs weigh just double what 

 untreated ewes could make theirs. To lessen the pollution lof the 

 fields is good. To increase the digestive powers of the ewes so that 

 they will give more milk is good. This treatment will not cost five 

 cents a head, once you set about it. If you go no farther you have 

 done well, but this is only the beginning. 



The next step will cost some money. Divide up your pastures. 

 Make of them about twelve divisions, we can not tell exactly yet how 

 many are needed. It is well if these pastures have had no sheep on 

 them for over a year. Let the lambs come when you will, though 

 early lambs are more profitable for mutton than later ones. Let them 

 come in February and March, but if you desire postpone the time till 

 April or May. Keep the ewes and lambs to the yard, feeding well till 

 grass is really good. If you like you may give a run to a rye field; 

 that is good to stimulate milk flow, but do not depend upon the rye, 

 and keep off your grass till it gets sun in it. Then turn all the ewes 

 and lambs to the pastures — all in one lot, together. Do not scatter 

 them all around, a few in each pasture; that has been your custom in 

 the past. Of course, you may have some dry ewes that you want to 

 keep back, but keep them clear out of your scheme; have a lot devoted 

 to them, or else keep them in the barn and feed them. Do not scatter 

 them around in your pastures. All together, I say, and let them at 

 the grass. How they will devour it! In the next field, just across 

 the fence, is where next they will go. Make a creep and let the lambs 

 run in there at the outset. "Aha," I hear Dan Taylor say, "that's 

 nothing but English hurdling!" Much the same, brother, granted, only 

 I am using our native pastures and permanent fences. 



We will hold the flock for a week, or less time if they eat the grass 

 down too close. There is almost no danger of infection in a week. The 

 germs may have fallen to the earth, but they have not developed. Then 

 the lambs have not eaten much with the ewes any way. They have soon 

 learned to run ahead to the other pasture, for stolen apples are sweet. 

 And in that pasture we will have troughs with a little corn or oats or 

 what not to push the lambs a little faster. In a week or less, then, the 

 whole flock moves up one place, ewes go where the lambs were, the 

 lambs go ahead again. One can not make a hard and fast rule here, for 

 it all depends on how many sheep there are and how much grass, only do 

 not keep them in the lot too long. A week is a safe proposition, it 

 would seem from the light of modern science. It is good for the grass 

 to be eaten close. The ewes will not suffer from doing this. Give 

 them a bite of bran if they are milking hard, or of oats. 



Then in another week turn them forward once more and again in 

 a third week, and so on right along till the lambs are all too fat to 

 keep at home and are sold off. Twelve pastures will run the flock 

 through June, July and part of August; sixteen lots will run them till 



