No. 4.] SHEEP INDUSTRY. 25 



must bo a good milker; you cannot raise lambs without good 

 mothers. The ram must be strong and masculine; you can- 

 not have a pinehed-up flock that will average CO pounds, and 

 do any thing with it. Perhaps the most essential thing of 

 all is to have a good milker. 



But to return to our example: ho had little money, and 

 could not get a farm well located ; so he bought a cheap one, 

 almost an abandoned one, the buildings somewhat out of 

 repair, but good hill laud. ITo was to pay $1,700 for it. 

 He had a brood mare and 2 cows; he then bought 90 aged 

 ewes, as good as he could find, not being afraid of an old 

 ewe if it showed signs of being a good breeder. He did not 

 agree wnth the newspaper editor, who says cull out the old 

 ewes every year; he knew that the old ew^e was the best 

 breeder, and would be most likely to bring him twins and 

 know how to take care of her lambs. 



He sowed 6 acres of oats and let them get dead ripe, and 

 stored them in his barn without threshing. He planted an 

 acre of turnips — ruta bagas — and an acre of corn, and he 

 sowed 6 acres of rape; his rape was in the back side of his 

 mow field, in a rough, wet place that he could not get ready 

 until June 20, but it was good land, and he put all the manure 

 on it that he could get. He used 3 to 4 pounds of seed to 

 the acre; 1 pound w^ould have done as well, or 20 pounds 

 would have done no harm ; it would have been better, perhaps, 

 if he had sown in drills and cultivated twice. 



When fall came, and the feed began to get short in the 

 pastures, he turned his whole flock into the field, but fenced 

 out the rape and the turnips with temporary fence. When 

 the feed got short in the field, and the frost came, he turned 

 the ewes back into the pasture and let the lambs into the rape, 

 giving them the run of the field and the rape, keeping always 

 a box of salt near the rape, in case a sheep should get too 

 much rape ; though in practice I have never knowm a case of 

 that kind, and I have fed rape without limit for a quarter 

 of a century. 



This brings us to what is, in my opinion, the most im- 

 portant part of our subject, — the cultivation of rape. I 

 have been talking sheep in some States for many years, and 



