FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 171 



and manipulations of sheep husbandry are simple and 

 readily acquired. On no other domestic animal is the 

 hazard of loss by death so small. It is as healthy and 

 hardy as other animals, and unlike all the others, if 

 decently managed, a good sheep can never die in the 

 debt of man. If it dies at birth, it has consumed 

 nothing. If it dies the first winter, its wool will pay 

 for its consumption up to that period. If it lives to 

 be sheared once, it brings its owner into debt to it ; 

 and if the ordinary and natural course of wool pro- 

 duction and breeding goes on, that indebtedness will in- 

 crease uniformly and with accelerating rapidity until 

 the day of its death. If the horse or the steer die at 

 three or four years old, or the cow before breeding, the 

 loss is almost a total one. 



I am aware that it is easy to warm one's self up in 

 praising a favorite pursuit, and to make a plausible 

 show of reasons for what will not stand the test of 

 experiment. But here we deal with fixed data. I 

 refer you to the column of prices for which wool has 

 sold in our country. If the cost of keeping sheep 

 through the same periods is fairly estimated, it will 

 be seen that with prime animals no other branch of 

 agriculture has yielded better or more uniform returns 

 on the capital invested. 



washed wool at the next shearing, and so small a number of this class 

 of sheep ought to raise 100 per cent, of lambs. If a choice Merino 

 ram is used, the lambs, when grown, will shear at least a pound of 

 wool more a head than their dams. And nearly an equal improve- 

 ment can be made in the next generation. I have, more than once, 

 witnessed a more rapid improvement than this. Even the common 

 fair Merino rams of the country often increase the dam's fleece half a 

 pound in the progeny for two or three generations, commencing on low 

 grade ewes. 



