212 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



pounds each, or 200 pounds, and would now bring at home fully 20 cents 

 per pound, or $40, making $20 in favor of the wethers. The quotations 

 on wool January 1, 1903, are just about the same as in May, 1900, when I 

 sold for 21 1-2 cents at my home my 400 fleeces of Delaine unwashed wool 

 weighing ten to fourteen pounds each. 



If we compare fat ewes with fat cows the wool is the profit of the 

 sheep over the cows, while lambs bring nearly as much by the hundred as 

 steers. 



It is wonderful that the prices of fat sheep have been so well main- 

 tained, when the receipts of sheep the past year have been so heavy — 

 more than 20 per cent more than in 1901. 



Steers and hogs were so very high last summer that many of the 

 sheepmen thought they were not making money fast enough and sold jff 

 their flocks and rushed around and brought stock steers at much higher 

 prices than they were worth two or three months later. Jt is quite prob- 

 able that if they had kept their sheep they would be better off next sum- 

 mer. The outlook for sheep and wool has not been so bright for many 

 years. All reliable statistics show that the amount of wool on hand in 

 the United States and in the world is much less than for many years. The 

 annual consumption of wool by woolen mills has greatly increased the 

 past three years. More than twice as much wool was used last year by 

 the United States mills as six years previous, while we produce no more 

 wool in this country than in 1893. The terrible seven years' drouth in 

 Australia, formerly the largest wool producing country in the world, has 

 greatly lessened the sheep and wool production there. The Argentine 

 Republic, which produces more wool than the United States, has during 

 the past few years changed the character and quality of her wool. Former- 

 ly keeping sheep wholly or mainly for wool only, their sheep were the 

 smallest size merinos, but the very low price of wool a few years ago, 

 and the European demand for mutton shipped in cold storage, induced 

 the flock owners there to cross their ewes with the large coarse wool 

 rams from England. They have now made two or three coarse wool 

 crosses. They could not get the large, good-bodied Delaine rams, now 

 raised to some extent in this country. The production of fine wool in the 

 world being thus greatly diminished it must be and already is in great 

 demand with higher prices. In fact all grades of wool are higher, the 

 result of which will be that flock owners will hold on to their sheep this 

 year and this will advance the price of mutton. 



While the general rule holds that it takes about the same amount 

 of feed to produce a thousand pounds of beef as a thousand pounds of 

 mutton, it often happens that sheep can be kept on cheaper feed. Sheep 

 eat a larger variety of plants or weeds than cattle and readily convert 

 even noxious weeds into wool and mutton. The common ragweed, which 

 some years grows thick and high in cattle pastures, is greatly relished by 

 sheep. They eat it like clover. A few years ago I bought a forty acres 

 which was thoroughly infested with cockleburs. Two years later none 

 were to be found. The sheep exterminated them. 



