66 SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 



perennial, and having long and stout roots, which cannot be 

 pulled up by the sheep, nor trodden down. Although the grass 

 may be apparently dry during a drouth, after a rain it becomes 

 perfectly green in a week or ten days. The rams, it may be 

 observed, except when they range with the ewes, are confined 

 in enclosed pastures. They receive in winter extra forage ; 

 either cotton-seed (which is considered more nourishing than 

 grain), or, more generally, oats. A new variety of oats has 

 recently been grown in Texas, called the " Antirust." This 

 varietjr has been known to produce as high as 100 bushels to 

 the acre, weighing 37 pounds to the bushel, instead of 32. 

 Through its introduction, the price of oats has been reduced 

 from about seventy or seventy-five cents to twenty-two cents. 

 It is sown in November, and fed off during the winter, which 

 increases the crop of grain. This variety would be admirably 

 adapted to the Georgia pine lands for a winter forage for 

 sheep. 



Although the original stock upon which Mr. Shaeffer's 

 flocks were engrafted was principally the native Mexican 

 sheep, improved by merino bucks, the Mexican blood has 

 been so completely eradicated as to show no trace of its ex- 

 istence. The native Mexicans would weigh scarcely more 

 than from fifty to fifty-five pounds, gross weight, and produce 

 fleeces of poor wool, weighing about four pounds. The im- 

 proved sheep of Mr. Shaeffer average for the whole flock 

 seven pounds of unwashed fine wool. His wethers or 

 "muttons," to adopt the Texan term will weigh, at four 

 years old, one hundred pounds gross weight. 



These sheep, which are of the best improved American 

 merino stock, make excellent mutton. The mutton fed upon 

 the mesquite grass never has any of the rankness or muttony 

 flavor peculiar to those sheep at the North. A great number 

 are now sent from Nueces and other counties in Texas to 

 St. Louis and Chicago, where they bring good prices. They 

 reach these markets before the Western sheep are sheared and 

 ready for the butcher ; and they form an important source of 

 supply for these markets in the spring, coming in like the 

 Southern vegetables to our Northern markets. A notice has 



