670 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



the world generally know what one has for sale is the emphatic business 

 of all producers and if this were done there are thousands of opportuni- 

 ties of making good business where at the present none is done. 

 Farmers do not as a rule try to learn of what kind of farm products 

 people are desirous and take no means of informing the public what 

 they have for sale. Why should not farmers, who are the largest pro- 

 ducers in the world, let the public know of what they have to sell? 

 Farmers now are not limited to hay, corn or wheat as the staple salable 

 products. There are a score or more of very desirable products that are 

 very convenient and would be very profitable for farmers to make and 

 sell that the general public don't know anything about, and never see- 

 ing are never desiring. Most of us don't know what we want until we 

 happen to see it and immediately we find it we want it very badly. And 

 it is foods and a larger variety of them that the people are hankering 

 for if they could only realize the fact by seeing them. And the writer's 

 experience in this line, for he was the first to offer fat young lambs for 

 sale in the market of New York City at Easter, and later for Christmas, 

 and a shipment of ten at once was the limit of possible sale. Now thous- 

 ands of them hang in the stalls and find rapid sale at good prices. It 

 is true that only a limited class of purchasers are found for these at the 

 present high prices, but the business is growing and very rapidly spread- 

 ing to the smaller cities, so that the supply is not in any danger of being 

 overstocked. Indeed, in all but the largest cities, there has been so far 

 no supply offered, and as a variety from the Thanksgiving turkey there 

 is no opportunity given for the country people so far as even trying 

 what a luscious fat sucking lamb is and of tasting its special savory 

 qualities. 



But there is a great opening for this business. And it is the most 

 profitable one to the producer who may get very easily the price of two 

 full grown sheep for one twenty-pound lamb live weight. Fresh grapes 

 are now selling for a dollar a pound and at this price the grower makes 

 twenty times as much profit as from the summer fruit. The finest kinds 

 of butter bring a dollar a pound and this even in the summer time. The 

 class of purchasers who can afford to buy things at such prices are 

 increasing in number continually and as there is no greater luxury put 

 on the wealthy man's table than a fat young sucking lamb, and the 

 supply Is very inadequate, so the price to be obtained is proportionately 

 high and profitable. There have been quite recently several lamb farms 

 established in the vicinity of Chicago, where fat stock for the C4irist- 

 mas festivals and the New Year is especially reared, and there is room 

 for many more. 



BEEEDINfi SPRING LAMBS. 



There is still a lingering idea that a Iamb is too young an animal to put 

 to breeding. There was a belief, some time ago, that a three-yeal-old ewe 

 was the right animal to put with the ram, which should be five years old 

 before it could be safely bred. It was said in ancient times, that far in 

 the future a thousand years should be as one day, and one day as a 



