58 WINTER FEEDING ON THE PRAIRIES. 



sheep husbandry on the prairies until they have this or that 

 special preparation for it? The sooner the prairie wool 

 grower can surround himself with all the convenient appli- 

 ances for his occupation, the better: but he acts entirely 

 wisely in not waiting for them! 



WINTER FEED. Hay made from the domestic grasses 

 the "tame grasses" as they are called in the West or clover, 

 is but little known on the prairies. The wild grasses make 

 sufficiently good hay, but like the preceding, it probably, in 

 most situations, has a cheaper substitute in Indian corn. The 

 remarkable adaptation of most of our prairie soils to this crop 

 is well known. Eighty bushels of it to the acre would be 

 regarded as a heavy crop anywhere but an extraordinary 

 one nowhere, on the first-class virgin soils. The stalks 

 properly cut and secured, yield nearly double the feed per 

 acre of the small varieties cultivated in the grazing regions 

 of the Eastern States. Its cultivation, too, on the mellow, 

 weedless, prairie soils can be performed vastly more easily 

 and cheaply. With two-horse corn planters, and two-horse 

 corn plows or cultivators, it is estimated 'that one man can 

 properly take care of fifty acres of it. It should be cut up 

 before the leaves are injured by frost, and placed in shocks, 

 where it remains until it is drawn out to be fed to the sheep. 

 It is drawn out twice a day and scattered on the ground. 

 One active man, with a suitable wagon and team, and devoting 

 his whole time to it, can feed about two thousand sheep. A 

 firm, sodded field of domestic grass is very desirable to feed 

 on, instead of one of wild grass, which soon becomes poached 

 and muddy in wet weather. If the field is large enough to 

 change the feeding places often, very little of the corn is 

 wasted. Some fanners, in place of cutting up the corn and 

 drawing it out in this way, leave it standing on the hill, and 

 fold the sheep on it a couple of hours twice a day ; but it is 

 a wasteful mode for the frost-bitten fodder is much less 

 valuable. 



The sheep are generally wintered in the feeding fields 

 without shelter, and even the farmers who have sheds do not 

 put their flocks into them except in very stormy nights, and 

 at lambing time. Those who have a sufiicicr/i, number of 

 feeding fields divide tiie sheep in the beginning of winter into 

 three or four lots. When this is impracticable, the lambs are 

 merely separated from the flock, and all the rest run together. 

 This last is very objectionable management, as it leaves the 



