CONFINEMENT TO YARDS AND DRY FEED. 221 



the yard they will " pick it over," eating the best parts, and 

 leaving enough to keep the littering constantly renewed. 



CONFINING SHEEP IN YARDS AND TO DRY FEED. A 

 decided majority of Northern flock-masters prefer the strict 

 confinement of sheep to their yards during the entire winter. 

 They contend that the slightest taste of the pasture during 

 thawing weather takes off" the appetite from hay, and that 

 sheep are equally healthy and even more thrifty under such 

 confinement. I dissent from both conclusions. 



If sheep, long kept from the grass by deep snows, are 

 suddenly admitted to it in consequence of a winter thaw, and 

 if they are allowed wholly to subsist on it for a number of 

 days as long as the thaw continues they unquestionably 

 lose condition and strength on herbage which has been 

 rendered innutritions by age and by repeated freezings and 

 tliasvings. Thin breeding ewes and young sheep sometimes 

 suffer materially in this way, particularly in the critical month of 

 March. When returned to their confinement and to dry feed, 

 they have no vigorous appetite for it, and consequently do not 

 recover from their debility. In certain unfavorable seasons 

 they pine, and eventually perish, if not solely from this cause, 

 yet with the fatal termination accelerated and rendered more 

 inevitable by it. Stronger sheep recover from* its effects 

 but of course any check in the thrift of a flock results in a 

 proportionable loss in some of its products. 



Having habitually and regularly fed turnips daily to 

 breeding ewes, young ewes, rams, and wethers, (when I have 

 kept the latter,) for the last fifteen or twenty winters, I am 

 enabled to affirm, of my own positive knowledge, that green 

 feed, administered in proper quantities, does not in the least 

 diminish the appetite for dry feed ; and that proper green 

 feed, so far from weakening, adds to the condition and 

 strength of sheep, besides producing other good effects which 

 will be adverted to when I speak of the relative value and 

 influence of winter feeds. The experience of the great body 

 of English farmers fully sustains these conclusions. The prac- 

 tice of wintering sheep exclusively on dry feed say on 

 meadow hay and straw, with or without grain or pulse is 

 substantially unknown in the arable districts of England. 

 For sheep of every class not to receive green feed daily 

 would there be an exception ; and fattening sheep receive it 

 in abundant quantities. 



The winter grass in our own Northern States, though 



