FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 399 



WHY I KEEP SHEEP. 



E. L. Bitterman^ Before the Cerro Gordo County Farmers'' Institute. 



I keep sheep for profit, pleasure and convenience. I have found no class 

 of live stock that can take the place of sheep on my farm. They are easily 

 handled, and taking it all the season through will thriye with less care and 

 cost than other stock. With the pig it is corn, corn, with a little grass for 

 change; with the lamb it is grass, grass, with a little corn to finish him. My 

 sheep spend a large part of the grazing season on catch crops as it were, 

 where it would be quite impossible to graze other stock, thus the advantage 

 of the sheep. We turn them on the oat field in the spring until near the 

 time of its shooting, say from the 1st to the 10th of June, to the benefit of 

 both sheep and oats. I have never had oats go down on account of being 

 on rich land where they were fed oflf properly with sheep. Cattle are too 

 heavy for this purpose and the sheep should be kept off for a while after the 

 rain. From the oat field the sheep are turned into the pasture for a couple 

 of months till after the harvest is gathered, when they are turned on the oat 

 stubble, which has plenty of clover and rape growing in it. They are kept 

 here until the latter part of September, then they are turned into the corn- 

 fields where rape was sown at the last cultivation. Here they are kept until 

 snow comes. Thus handled they keep in good health, thrive nicely, and 

 make cheap mutton and wool. One hundred well bred ewes, taken as an 

 average for ten years, are worth $500, and will weigh about fifteen 

 thousand pounds, and if pastured as cattle are, will need about the same 

 amount of pasture as fifteen thousand pounds of cattle. They should 

 and will, with fair care, rear one hundred lambs and produce eight 

 hundred pounds of wool per year. And again taking the average for ten 

 years, will bring about $650 per year. One naturally does best with the kind of 

 stock he likes best. I have had a natural fancy for good sheep since a child, 

 and it grows more or less with age. I would go more miles to see good sheep 

 than to see Dan Patch or the great bull Duke of Oakland. Now, I have no 

 quarrel with the steer, cow or hog. Let the market go up or down, but I 

 never could see why, when sheep are low for a while, many men will close 

 them out, bells and all, but still be true to other stock when like conditions 

 exist. 



Sheep and wool growing is a great business, a fascinating business, like 

 all other stock growing and breeding, with its ups and downs, with its 

 pleasures and disappointments, with its profits and loss, and while I have 

 not grown rich raising sheep, the balance is usually on the right side of the 

 ledger, and that 1 am now a sheep breeder, I'll stick to my last, and no 

 steer feeder or hog feeder, can tempt me to leave it, for he also has his 

 troubles; and taking it all in all, 1 think good sheep pay as good returns on 

 high-priced land as any other stock one can grow. 



In conclusion, will say there are four large C's that must enter into suc- 

 cessful sheep growing, namely: Careful selection, Cleanliness, Clover hay 

 and Common sense. 



