272 FARM ANIMALS 



will begin to eat grain at the age of four weeks if en- 

 couraged, or even somewhat earlier, and will grad- 

 ually increase the size of their grain ration dur- 

 ing the remaining month until they reach a proper 

 market finish. A test was paade of crossing Dor- 

 sets on Merino and Shropshire ewes in Wisconsin 

 in which it appeared that the first cross Dorsets 

 would breed before the ninth of July and drop their 

 lambs by the middle of November. While it is, 

 therefore, true that the first cross ewes are ordi- 

 narily ready to breed at the right time for securing 

 winter lambs there is more certainty of early breed- 

 ing in the second cross of Dorset rams on native 

 sheep. It should not be supposed that ordinary 

 ewes will breed any earlier to a Dorset buck than 

 to any other kind of sheep. The tendency to early 

 breeding majr be transmitted from the rams, 

 not to the native ewes, but to their cross-bred off- 

 spring and to the subsequent lambs obtained by 

 using a Dorset ram to the cross-bred sheep. 



The production of winter lambs is a specialty 

 which requires skill and experience and should not 

 be gone into headlong without some previous know- 

 ledge of the business. One advantage beside the 

 profit to be gained from raising winter lambs is 

 that in regions where the stomach worms are very 

 bad, lambs which come in the late fall are largely 

 spared the risk of infection, especially in the nor- 

 thern states, whereas lambs which come in May 

 are almost sure to become infested during the sum- 

 mer months. This does not apply to the same 

 extent in the far South where the growing season 

 extends nearly the year round, but in the northern 

 states the infestation with the stomach worm takes 

 place almost always in the summer and consequent- 

 ly if lambs come in November they need not be 



