198 SHEEP : BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 



PROFITS. 



It is exceedingly difficult to come to a conclusion as to 

 profits. Attempts have been made to reduce this question to 

 one of book-keeping, but such methods are fallacious. It is 

 impossible to say what a flock costs, because the whole business 

 of farming is inextricably interlaced. The grazing of sheep 

 upon clover, for example, is beneficial to succeeding crops, and 

 folding upon turnips is not to be charged to the sheep alone. 

 Cake and corn given to sheep are also partly expended upon 

 them and partly upon the land, and labour is similarly difficult 

 to apportion. However exact a system of book-keeping may 

 be, many of these items could only be assessed by the exercise 

 of judgment, and they would therefore be open to argument, 

 and cease to be of the value which the figures appeared to 

 indicate. Gross revenue can be easily ascertained, and after 

 that no system of books can improve upon careful thinking out 

 of the items of expenditure with a view to forming a judgment. 

 There can, however, be no doubt that sheep are profitable. 

 One of the saddest features connected with the agricultural 

 depression is that many farmers have parted with their sheep, 

 and were unable to participate in the good prices which 

 sheep farmers recently realised. Corn and roots, mutton and 

 residual fertility, are so mixed up in the general conduct of 

 farming business that it is impossible to separate them except 

 by the rough-and-ready system of halving or quartering the 

 expenses. Such guesses, when put down in books, are accurate 

 in appearance, but rest on a weak foundation. I would rather 

 take a general view as to the cost per head of, say, i Ib. of corn 

 per day at fd., and add 4d., 5d., or 6d. for the natural food ot 

 the farm, according to its abundance. Add to these items the 

 cost per head of attendance on a basis arrived at on a covering 

 scale. Add to this, losses at 5 per cent, per annum, which 

 would probably not be more than is. per week per score, or 

 less than |d. per sheep per week. 



Sheep will, by such a calculation, be found to cost a figure 



