SHEEP. 215 



introducing the machinery necessary for its manufacture, and 

 it only remains for the farmer to supply the raw material, (and 

 a vast quantity it will take,) and thus save this needless expen- 

 diture of money for foreign goods. 



The committee feel under obligation to Messrs. Pox, of New 

 Ipswich, and White, of South P'ramingham, for the interest they 

 so generously gave to this department of the exhibition. 



HAMPDEN. 



Statement of C. L. Buell. 



The twenty ewes I present are crosses of the South Down 

 and native. " Several of them, recently slaughtered at sixteen 

 years of age, were until the last year of their lives the most pro- 

 fitable sheep in the flock. One year they produced two sets of 

 lambs, which with their wool averaged ten dollars per head. 

 From November, 18G2, to March last, the flock had four quarts 

 of corn per day, with all the swale hay they wanted. This hay 

 was worth only five dollars per ton, and they would pick out 

 about half of it, the remainder being used for litter. After 

 the first of March the corn was withheld and they were fed on 

 rowen and English hay. They commenced lambing about the 

 middle of March. Lost some on account of cold weather, but 

 saved twelity-six, which sold for four dollars a head. Their 

 fleeces averaged three and one-fourth pounds, which were sold at 

 shearing time for sixty-two cents. They were turned to pasture 

 the middle of May, having consumed during the winter half of 

 two tons of swale hay worth five dollars, sixteen bushels of 

 corn worth sixteen dollars, and one and a half tons of good 

 hay worth eighteen dollars. The pasturing for twenty-two 

 weeks in summer I estimate at fifteen dollars, which is a liberal 

 estimate considering the advantage to the soil, their manure 

 not evaporating like the droppings of cattle and horses. The 

 total cost therefore for one year I call fifty-four dollars. My 

 receipts were twenty-six lambs at four dollars each, one hundred 

 and four dollars ; sixty-five pounds wool at sixty-two cents per 

 pound, forty dollars and thirty cents. Total, one hundred forty- 

 four dollars and thirty cents. Profit, ninety dollars and thirty 

 cents. The flock is in better condition than it was a year ago. 



Ludlow, October 6, 1863. 



