SUMMER AND WINTER RANGES FOR SHEEP. 19 



are utilized from July until October. Several reasons may be urged 

 for this system of management. In the first place, it is most con- 

 venient to have the ewes near home during the period of lambing, 

 since they require constant attention at this time. The shearing sea- 

 son falls almost immediately after that of lambing, and it is obviously 

 desirable that the wool should be removed at the points which are most 

 convenient for transporting it to the railroad. A third reason, which 

 is not less important, is the fact, which has been demonstrated by 

 repeated experiments, that the foothill or mountain ranges are much 

 more dangerous from the standpoint of poisonous plants during the 

 early wet season than during the latter part of the summer and fall. 

 Sheep men have known for several years that it is relatively or 

 entirely safe to keep sheep on mountain ranges after the middle of 

 July on which large numbers of sheep would almost certainly be 

 poisoned if allowed to graze there during the months of May and 

 June. It is a fact generally observed by stockmen, and especially 

 apparent to an observer in traveling over different parts of the State, 

 that the range becomes freer and freer from plants of all description, 

 except grasses, the farther one goes from the mountains. In the 

 open prairie countr)% at a distance of 20 miles from the foot- 

 hills or mountains, there are thousands of acres of good grazing 

 country where almost no vegetation except grass is to be found. The 

 grass upon the clean prairie range is. for the most part, short, and it 

 is well known that short grass is preferred by sheep to tall grass, 

 which, under ordinary circumstances, they avoid. This observed fact 

 is strikingly illustrated in the different feeding habits of sheep on 

 prairie ranges and on mountain ranges. On the former, sheep, as 

 just indicated, seem decidedly to prefer short grass and such other 

 plants as ma}' in their early vegetative stages resemble grass, as, for 

 instance, the species of Zj^gadenus. Other plants of a coarser nature 

 are almost uniformly avoided on a prairie range during the greater 

 part of the season. When, on the other hand, sheep are taken to the 

 mountain range during Juh'^ they avoid, for the most part, the tall 

 grass growing in such localities and feed upon other plants, such as 

 Balsamorhiza. Lepachys, Solidago, Potentilla, Spiraea, Astragalus, 

 Glycyrrhiza, Lupinus, Geranium, etc. 



The difficulties which lie in the way of grazing sheep and cattle 

 together on a prairie range partly disappear on the mountain ranges 

 from the fact that the sheep and cattle do not there eat the same kinds 

 of plants, the cattle preferring grass and the sheep the class of plants 

 which have just been instanced. The majority of plants known to be 

 poisonous and which are especially dangerous during the wet months 

 of May and June are so far advanced by the time the sheep are taken 

 to the mountain ranges that they are not tempting and are not eaten. 

 The smaller species of larkspur {Delphiniani hicolor) and death camas 



