PENS FOSTER LAMBS. 159 



convenient to attach some peculiar paint mark both to the 

 ewe and lamb, so that they can be readily recognized. If a 

 ewe is obstinate about accepting her lamb, frightening her 

 sometimes aids to arouse her maternal instincts. Some 

 shepherds show her a strange dog, a child wearing a bright 

 colored mantle, or the like. I never chanced to suffer 

 inconvenience by it, but I am informed by good shepherds 

 that on driving flocks of ewes with new-born lambs, when they 

 are wet, into a crowded barn, and keeping them there for 

 s ome time, it produces great confusion in the recognition of 

 lambs, particularly by the young ewes: and my informants 

 attributed this to the lambs rubbing together, and thus 

 blending or disguising those odors by which each ewe is 

 supposed alone to distinguish her own lamb, until she 

 becomes accustomed to recognize it by sight and by its voice. 

 If a ewe exhibits the least indifference to her lamb when it is 

 firstborn or if it is quite weak, or in a crowded stable, 

 or requires help of any kind, a pen should be immediately 

 brought and placed around them. 



PENS. Every breeding barn should be provided with 

 a dozen or two of pens, ready made, and hung up on pegs 

 overhead. They should be about three by three and a half, or 

 three and a half by four feet in dimensions, very light but 

 strong ; and in field lambing, canvas covers on top and 

 one canvas side cover to a few of them would be highly 

 convenient to keep off rain and cold winds. 



FOSTER LAMBS. If a ewe having a good udder of milk 

 loses her lamb, and a young or feeble ewe disowns hers, or 

 is unable to raise it properly, the lamb of the latter should 

 be transferred to the former. This can usually be readily 

 effected. If the skin of the foster dam's lamb can be taken 

 off soon after death, and fastened on the lamb she is required 

 to adopt, she will generally take to it at once or after only a 

 moment's hesitation. Neither the head, legs nor tail of the 

 skin need to* be retained. It should be fastened by strings 

 (sewed through the edges of it,) tied under the neck and 

 body the labor of a moment and that is all that is 

 required. Those persons, already mentioned, who transfer 

 all the lambs of their two-year old ewes to foster dams, in 

 some instances put good-milking coarse ewes to ram at the 

 same time with their young ewes, or a trifle later. These are 



