FITTING SHEEP FOR SHOW RING AND MARKET 141 



PART III. 



Raising Hot House Lambs. 



This is a most important and profitable branch of the 

 sheep business when carried on on a business-like basis. It is 

 folly, however, for any one to launch out into this business 

 without the right stock-in-trade, the most important item of 

 which is a good flock of ewes, endowed with an unusual share 

 of maternal instinct, milking qualities, precocity, prolificacy 

 and fecundity. To this must be added a comfortable, but not 

 necessarily costly, barn. Then the men in charge must be 

 honest and faithful. Whilst it is true that we sometimes find 

 an occasional ewe in almost all flocks that readily encour- 

 ages the amorous attentions of the ram at a time favorable 

 to the bringing about of yeaning at a desirable time for the 

 production of early lambs, it is no less true that very few 

 flocks or breeds have this peculiarity or trait in such a 

 marked degree as to warrant the owners of same launching 

 out into the hot-house lamb business with any degree of 

 safety or much chance of success. 



But few of the Down breeds are really reliable as early 

 lamb-raisers, but there is one, whose precocity and fecundity 

 warrants it a place among those classed as early lamb-raisers. 

 It is the Hampshire. 



Among the long-wools we find that the Devon-Longwool 

 compares very favorably with those whose mission is that 

 of raising early lambs for the market. The Rambouillet, the 



