550 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



beautiful animals. I have some interesting notes of his 

 flock, which I hope to be able to write out some day. 



One of the first objects with the shepherd upon the 

 prairie, should be to get a good stock of domestic grass 

 for fall feed. A good substitute may be found in rye 

 sown very early — say in August certain. I believe that 

 blue grass will be found to be the most permanent pas- 

 ture that can be made for sheep, and that it may be 

 worked in upon the prairie by fencing small lots and 

 yarding sheep, which will soon kill the wild grass, and 

 then by sowing the blue grass seed, it will take well 

 without plowing. As I before remarked, the greatest 

 difficulty in our soft, rich, black prairie soil, is the mud. 

 Great care must be taken in yarding sheep, both summer 

 and winter, not to confine them in too small a space, 

 as I know of no animal that has a greater antipathy to 

 lying down in the mud, than a sheep; and no treatment 

 more likely to procure disease and death. If your yards, 

 where you usually feed and keep the flock, get muddy, 

 you must move them, or they will die. Don't say that 

 you have nowhere else to put them. You must find a 

 place if it is a mile from home, and you have to haul 

 your hay and camp with them every night for a month. 

 I have proved by experiment, that sheep will do better 

 without water than in water. Last winter while I was 

 at the South, one of my neighbors who had taken 225 

 of my sheep upon a contract to keep for the increase 

 of the flock, giving me the wool, lost one-third of them, 

 as I believe, solely from keeping them in too small a 

 yard, where for weeks at a time the poor creatures never 

 had a dry spot to lie down upon. And I have been told 

 that at times they stood in mud knee deep. Of course 

 I took from this brutal man the whole of the increase, 

 having no more mercy upon him than he had upon the 

 poor creatures that fell into his hands; and I feel as 

 though I did not punish him sufficiently at that time. 

 Now, I fear, there are hundreds of just such flock-mas- 

 ters, — ignorant, stupid, unfeeling, and indolent. They 



