FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VI. 397 



^ SHEEP. 



DOES IT PAY TO RAISE AND FEED SHEEP IN IOWA 



y. S. Smiih\ Plover, Iowa, Before the Pocahontas County Farmers' 



histitute . 



This subject should be of interest to every Pocahontas county farmer. 

 But we are afraid that many of the farmers in this county will look upon 

 sheep raising as of little importance to them. No doubt there are those in 

 our midst who have made a failure with both raising and feeding sheep and 

 thus condemn them. 



To make sheep feeding and raising a success you must be properly fixed 

 for it. Build a woven wire fence not less than fifty inches high around 

 your farm, then you will not be troubled with worthless dogs, and your 

 sheep will not be bothering your neighbors. Get the water off your land 

 (where you intended to put in five inch tile put in eight or ten inch) , then 

 sow all you can to clover and timothy. Don't let the weeds grow up along 

 your fence but sow it to grass. 



Get fifty or one hundred ewes that will drop lambs about April first; 

 have plenty of pasture for them and if you can change them every two weeks 

 they will do much better. From fifty good ewes you should raise seventy 

 lambs. 



As soon as your grain is cut turn your lambs out into your field. Don't 

 be afraid — they won't hurt your grain shocks or your corn, but those weeds 

 that have been sapping the life out of your farm the past twenty-five years 

 will begin to disappear, and your crops will yield one third more. Give 

 them a chance, they will do the work and won't look at the sun to see if it is 

 seven o'clock in the morning or six o'clock at night. These lambs by the 

 15th of December should weigh in Chicago, ninety-five to one hundred 

 pounds each. 



If you start with fifty ewes you will not have enough to make a car load. 

 Buy enough western lambs to fill out your car and also another car, about 

 September first; turn them into your field; commence feeding them a little 

 oats; in about two weeks add a little corn; at the end of a month, giving 

 them nothing but corn, they will eat but little. Do not think because these 

 lambs are running in your corn field they get all they want, and say if 

 they do not know enough to eat it let them go without. You will have 

 lambs in your flock that can not get the corn off the ear and must go with- 

 out, when you get these to Chicago you will find about fifteen or twenty culls 

 in your lot that, if you had given them a little shelled corn, would have 

 sold as well as the others. 



In purchasing western lambs, if possible, get those that have been grazed 

 on the alkali lands of Wyoming. You may have to pay a little more for 

 them but you will find them the cheapest in the end. They are free from 

 disease and will feed out much better than our native lambs. 



