238 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



pets in. " Sheep well summered are half wintered." To let them become thin 

 before Avinter, renders it difficult and far more expensive to winter them safely 

 and well ; they are not as likely to take the ram, and their product of wool is 

 diminished. And if quite thin, there is an absolute peril to their lives if the 

 winter is an unfavorable one, however well they may be taken care of. The 

 danger is the greatest to the quite young and the old sheep. These sometimes 

 will not improve, but begin to run at the nose and eyes, gradually lose their 

 appetite, grow weaker and weaker, in some cases exhibiting costiveness, and in 

 others obstinate diarrhoea, and perish miserably. When they commence going 

 in this way, medicine, feed, and care are almost thrown away upon them. 



COUPLING, ETC. 



Before rams are put with the ewes in the fall, the latter should be examined — ' 

 directly and by the register — and divided into parcels, so that each parcel can 

 be coupled with the ram most suitable to coiTcct the defects of the dam in her 

 oflfspriiig. Thus the shortest woolled ewes would be selected out for the longest 

 wooUcd ram; flat-sided and long-legged ewes for a peculiarly round-bodied and 

 short-legged ram, and so on. A ram running with the ewes ought not generally 

 to be trusted to serve more than fifty. If taken out nights and extra fed, a very 

 strong animal will serve a hundred. By keeping him separate from the ewes, 

 and allowing him to serve them but once each, he will serve two hundred, and 

 some uncommonly vigorous rams have served three hundred, and even more in 

 a coupling season of six weeks. The best feed for the ram, besides good hay 

 or grass, is a mixture of, say, tw^o parts oats, one part peas, with a slight sprink- 

 ling of wheat. He should be fed a few days before the coupling season, com- 

 mencing with not more than half a pint, and increasing gradually to a quart by 

 the time his work commences. Some old rams, which have become used to 

 hard work and high keep, will consume nearly double that quantity. The 

 Merino ram is in his prime from three to seven or eight years of age. The ram 

 lamb gets good stock if not overworked, but this premature use trenches on his 

 subsequent vigor. The periods of heat ia the ewe recur from the fourteenth 

 to the seventeenth day. Her avel-age period of gestation is about one hundred 

 and fifty-two days. 



DIVIDING FLOCKS FOR AVINTER. 



Sheep should be divided according to size and strength before they are put 

 into winter quarters, so that the strong shall not take advantage of the weak at 

 the rack, trough, &c. This is highly important. The smaller the number of 

 sheep kept together in winter the better it is for them, and good farmers rarely 

 allow more than one hundred to occupy the same stable and yard. 



WINTER MANAGEMENT. 

 WINTER SHELTER. 



There is no part of the United States, if there is of the world, where sheep 

 are not better for some degree of winter shelter. In western Texas and in the 

 Gulf States, perhaps, they demand no more than a pole-shed or dense clump of 

 trees to break the fury of the "northers ;" north of latitude 40° to 42°, close 

 b^rns or stables, with abundant ventilation, are beginning to be preferred by 

 careful and systematic breeders. Open sheds are too much exposed to drifting 

 stiow, and they cannot be shut up and made warm enough for early lambing. 

 A room twenty by forty feet in the clear will properly accommodate seventy- 

 five Paular sheep, and they can all eat at a time, without crowding, at wall 

 racks placed around it. The Infantados want a little more room ; and the 

 English breeds still more. Sheep barns should be placed in dry, elevated, 

 but not windy situations. They are usually two stories high, the upper one 



