ORDINARY TREATMENT OF LAMBS. 



137 



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CHAPTER XIV. 

 ORDINARY TREATMENT OF LAMBS. 



' THE management of lambs from birth to weaning is a sub- 

 ject of great importance. That it varies much, according 

 to locality, must be freely admitted, from a method which 

 may be summed up as a daily or twice-daily inspection, to the 

 highly artificial system of close folding and constant changes 

 of food, such as prevails upon the downs of Wiltshire and 

 Hampshire. Between these extremes lie many variations in 

 practice, differing in comparative expense and trouble ; some 

 very simple, some more complicated, so that it would indeed 

 be difficult to please all parties by any description of lamb 

 management. 



Take, for example, the treatment of lambs in Northumber- 

 land or Lincolnshire, and we shall find, so far as food is 

 concerned, that almost all that is required is abundance. 

 Lambs are dropped in March and April, and after the usual 

 care bestowed during the first three or four days after birth, 

 lambs and dams are placed on fresh young seeds, or, it may 

 be, upon permanent pasture. There may be seen Leicester or 

 Leicester-Cheviot ewes with their lambs, the very picture of 

 contentment, feeding upon the. fresh herbage of Italian rye- 

 grass and springing clovers, while their offspring play around, 

 or make a rush upon their patient mothers two at a time, 

 wagging their tails and "dunching"at her with their heads 

 until they almost raise her hinder parts off the ground. In 

 these cases the ewes are thinly run over the entire field, and 



