PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF BREEDING. 113 



should not even have what is termed a " ewe's fleece," but a 

 longer, thicker and coarser one.* 



The Merino ram produces strong, healthy lambs from the 

 age of seven or eight months to that of eight or ten years, 

 and sometimes later, if he has never been over-worked. He 

 does not attain his full maturity of vigor until he is three, 

 and he usually begins to decline at seven or eight. A ram 

 lamb ought not, for his own good, to be used to over ten 

 or fifteen ewes merely enough to test his qualities as a sire ; 

 and to fit him properly for even this amount of work, he 

 should be large, strong, and fleshy. A yearling can, without 

 injury, do one-third and a two-year-old two-thirds the work 

 of a mature ram. Strong, mature rams will, on the average, 

 properly serve about two hundred ewes a year. I speak 

 in all the above cases of but a single service to each ewe, 

 and of a coupling season extending from forty to forty-five 

 days. Rams have often exceeded these numbers. An 

 Intantado ram lamb owned by Loyal C. Wright, of Corn- 

 wall, Vermont, got one hundred and three lambs in the 

 fall of 1862. The "Wooster Ram," so celebrated through- 

 out Vermont, served three hundred ewes when a year 

 old.f Some strong rams, in their prime, have served 

 four hundred. The "Old Robinson Ram" is believed to 

 have got nearly three thousand lambs during his life of 

 thirteen or fourteen years. The Merino ewe breeds from 

 her second to her tenth or twelfth year, and sometimes 

 considerably longer, if carefully nursed after she begins to 

 decline. J It is better for her, however, not to breed until 

 her third year. Some, however, who have valuable ewes, 



* A ram of the same blood and breeding does not require to be as fine as a ewe, 

 to get female progeny equal to her in fineness ; and an over-fine ram generally gets too 

 light-fleeced progeny. His own fineness, unless an exceptional quality, shows that he 

 has been bred too far in the direction of fineness, and, consequently, away from the 

 proper standard of weight, for the maximum of these two qualities in the same fleece 

 is not even approximately attainable. If the over-fine ram has himself a fleece of 

 good weight, it is to be apprehended in the absence of a full knowledge of antecedents 

 that the latter quality is exceptional, and that he may breed too much in the 

 opposite direction. 



t So I am informed by Mr. Abel J. Wooster, of West Cornwall, Vermont. He 

 purchased the ram of Mr. Hammond when a lamb and hence the name of " Wooster 

 Ram," or rather, according to a prevailing Americanism, "Wooster Buck." Some 

 Merino breeders who find this name in the pedigrees of their sheepmay be interested 

 to learn the following particulars communicated to me by Mr. Wooster. The ram 

 never exceeded about 100 Ibs. weight with his fleece off. His first fleece weighed 12M 

 Ibs., his second 19, l Ibs., and " after that he began to run down," and died before the 

 completion of his fourth year. "He would bear heavy feed, and that and hard ser- 

 vice shortened his life." 



t I stated in my Report on Fine- Wool Husbanry, 1862, that I had been informed 

 that the dam of the " Old Robinson Ram " produced a lamb in her twenty-second 

 year. I have since ascertained that I was misinformed on the subject. 



