SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART I. 41 



she didn't know it. I says, "if we will just get started with this little 

 bunch of sheep"_perhaps. if I will tell you how I started in, you will 

 get some hints. I took them home and I took good care of them. In 

 the spring they dropped me a few lambs, not quite 100 per cent. One 

 dropped a lamb in January, and I took good care of that lamb. I kept it 

 warm, you know; we nursed that little lamb all through until spring; 

 what a buster it was. We named him Romeo. You know that lamb 

 was so good and when fall came I sold him for $100. The rest 

 dropped little ones; they didn't amount to very much through the sum- 

 mer; yet some of them thrived. The next winter I said, "I am going to 

 do something; I am going to make these old ewes give me splendid 

 results, and 1 am going to give them good care;" they were pretty 

 ewes. You know I had been reading farm journals; I had been read- 

 ing farm papers; read about protein. I said," what these ewes need 

 is protein and bone matter." I hunted around the books and found an 

 advertisement of wheat bran. I bought wheat bran and I stuffed them 

 with all the wheat bran they could eat. Along in the winter — that 

 wife of mine, she would go with me to hold the lantern to see the 

 ewes. The babies were coming; they came fine and strong; they 

 ought to — all that protein — they came fine and strong. But boys let 

 me tell you, some came so fine and strong, they couldn't come at all. 

 One of them weighed 17 pounds when it was born. The poor ewe died 

 soon after; but the lamb was strong enough to take him in the kitchen. 

 He would come under the kitchen chair and tip it over. It died, 

 because I didn't know how to feed it on cows' milk. Then I had an old 

 neighbor who raised sheep all his life. He says: "Joe, the trouble is 

 with you; you don't want to stuff them all winter; that is what makes 

 the lambs so awful big; no use to have them so awful big when they 

 are born; just turn them out in the pasture and let them rough it; 

 give the ewes enough exercise." I says, "all right, I can do that;" I 

 do a lot of feeding of stock; so I just fed those ewes out in the pas- 

 ture on wheat straw and corn fodder and sceneries, and stuff." When 

 the lambs came in the spring, friends, I will tell you, they wern't too 

 big; they came strong enough, but I will tell you where the trouble 

 was; when those little lambs were born the mothers hadn't any milk 

 for them at all. Well, it was really comical. The little lamb would 

 be born, strong and all right; and you would go up and look at it 

 and look around, and the ewe would say to you, "Joe, here is your 

 lamb," and off she would go. She hadn't a single drop of milk in her 

 udder. Then 1 learned the great truth that, if she hasn't any 

 milk in her udder, she won't own it at all. Then I would carry out 

 some cow's milk and feed it. (I had a string of ewes clear along the 

 side of the fence of the pasture; it was a sorrowful time; (pretty try- 

 ing for the ewes.) I learned then the great truth, if that ewe hasn't 

 any milk in her udder, she hasn't got any love in her heart. Instinct 

 told her that. After that I learned that those ewes in the winter time 

 should be well fed. but not fattened. I didn't even give them all the 

 alfalfa they wanted. I fed them a part alfalfa; that is splendid, or 



