326 THE AMERICAN FARMER 



of Chester, famous as a cheese district, are kept up only by the constant use of bone dust. Sheep, 

 on the other hand, through the peculiar nutritiousness of their manure, and the facility with 

 which it is distributed, are found to be the most economical and a certain means of constantly 

 renewing the productiveness of the land. By the combination of sheep husbandry with 

 wheat culture, lands in England which in the time of Elizabeth produced, on an average, six 

 and a half bushels of wheat per acre, produce now over thirty bushels. For these reasons, 

 the recent practical writers in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 

 pronounce that, while there is no profit in growing sheep in England simply for their mutton 

 and wool, sheep husbandry is still an indispensable necessity, as the sole means of keeping up 

 the land. 



Experience in the United States leads to similar conclusions. Mr. Stilson, of Wisconsin, 

 by keeping sheep, is able to raise his twenty-four bushels of wheat to the acre, while the 

 average yield of wheat in Wisconsin is but ten bushels. There are cases in Vermont where 

 sheep farmers have been compelled to abandon one farm after another as they became too 

 fertile for profitable sheep growing. Mr. George Geddes, whom Horace Greeley used to 

 regard as the highest authority on agricultural matters in the State of New York, and who 

 has raised sheep for many years in connection with wheat, says that, with one sheep to the 

 acre of cultivated land, pasture and meadows, he raises more bushels of grain, on the average, 

 than he did when he had no sheep to manufacture his coarse forage into manure, and to 

 enrich his pastures to prepare them for the grain crop; that the land is constantly improving, 

 and the crop increasing in quantity; and that, while producing crops on less acres and at less 

 cost than he did before he kept sheep, he has, in addition, the wool and the mutton produced ly 

 the sheep. 



Mr. William Chamberlain, of Red Hook, Dutchess County, New York, celebrated as a 

 grower of Silesian sheep, purchased, in 1840, a farm in that place of 380 acres, which had 

 been used so long for selling hay that it was worn out. The hay crop, in 1841, was seventeen 

 loads; forty acres of rye gave ten bushels to the acre; twenty-five acres of corn averaged 

 twenty bushels to the acre; the rest of the farm pastured two horses, four oxen, and one 

 cow. The land was so poor that it would not raise red clover. By using sheep as the 

 producers and manufacturers of manure, he made this worn-out farm so productive that its 

 crops would be satisfactory even in Ohio. The product, in 1866, was 600 tons hay; 40 acres 

 of Indian corn, yielding 50 bushels to the acre; 30 acres of wheat, averaging 15 bushels; 30 

 acres of oats, 8 acres of roots, and the pasturage of 300 sheep, and of the teams, cows, etc., 

 necessary to carry on the farm and to supply the families on it with milk and butter. 



Mr. Chamberlain s plan, when he first commenced making manure by using sheep, was 

 to spread it thinly, so as to go over all the surface he could, and make clover grass; and he 

 said that when he had brought his land to where it would produce clover, improvement 

 thenceforth was easy and rapid. The sheep not only gave a first impulse, but were all the 

 time depended upon as the great manure-producing power. 



The farmers of Connecticut in former times appreciated the fertilizing influence of 

 sheep. In Goshen, Conn., the public roads were anciently laid out eight rods wide; and in 

 these highways it was customary to pasture sheep, which were taken care of by a man and 

 boy at the expense of the town. The yarding of the sheep at night that the manure might 

 not be lost was let out at the town meeting. On the night of May 27th, preceding the cold 

 summer of 1816, it was the turn of a certain farmer to yard the sheep for the night. He 

 had no field which would hold the sheep some 800 in number except one planted with 

 corn which had just come up. Preferring to sacrifice the corn rather than lose the manure, 

 he turned the flock into his corn field. On that night the frost cut off all the corn in the 

 town, and the sheep cut off the corn of the said farmer, who congratulated himself in the 

 morning that he was no worse off than his neighbors. He soon found, however, that he was 



