44 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



able to resist and able to fight the parasite in that way. And they 

 give a lot of medicine. A man will go through and drench his whole 

 flock. 



Well, we sell everything in we have for market in the spring; 

 never later than July, and have them fat and gone before the western 

 ones come in. Just feed this corn with your good blue grass, alfalfa, 

 rape and sowed oats; just make it a business of fattening them up 

 and let them go. 



There is another branch of sheep culture, and that is fattening 

 lambs. We have on the farm now about 450 western lambs that we feed. 

 I think we feed the best lambs in Ohio, getting right down to a nice 

 little system. When I began feeding lambs in 1890, it was an experi- 

 ment with me; I didn't know anything about it. I bought my first 

 two hundred, I remember very well; I didn't know anything about 

 it. I asked a man how he did. I told him the story about protein. 

 I had nothing but timothy oats and straw, and I went and bought 

 wheat bran. They did well. I fed the first bunch of lambs, every 

 feed with my own hands. They did better for me than anv h^ve 

 since. These lambs weighed 55 pounds in the barn in the fall, and 

 155 pounds when they came out in the spring. I said, "good; this 

 thing of farming in Ohio is solved now; I can sell and feed all the 

 lambs and put the manure back on the ground and make a litl. 3 

 profit on it too; this thing is solved." So I went to work the next year. 

 You know, I had to buy a part of the hay. Do you know when I fed 

 350 I made some money on them. I said to myself "some day, on this 

 farm, I am going to feed 1,000 lambs." You know I didn't tell any- 

 body that. "Now. this old farm is poor; I am going to build it up, 

 put the manure back on it." Finally, on that farm I fed 500 and 700, 

 and I fed a thousand on it. I was a proud boy. Finally I fed twelve 

 hundred on tliat farm; that year they brought big prices. Now, on 

 that same farm we have 1,400, besides the old ewes and little lambs. 

 You know they increased the fertility of that farm, — by that system, 

 feeding all the stuff that was raised on the farm to these blessed sheep, 

 and putting the manure back. 



I am going to tell you how we feed the 1,400; it is such a simple 

 process. We feed them nothing on earth but corn and alfalfa. The 

 corn is put in the silo first. We fill these silos with corn when the 

 corn is almost ripe so that it comes out sweet and full grown; then 

 we feed them alfalfa and corn. We buy small lambs with a good 

 cross of mutton blood in them. This year, I think they weighed 50 

 pounds. We have had them weigh even less. The most money I ever 

 made on them, was a bunch, I had to push them almost to get them to 

 the ground when I unloaded them from the cars. We turned them 

 first into a blue grass pasture for a day or two; we didn't turn them 

 out to blue grass at all. It might be different in Iowa; we just let them 

 rest up and feed a little bit. Then we dipped them with some strong 

 solution of coal tar; we only dipped them once; just simply put them 

 in and let them walk out. We never had the scab to break out after 



