140 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA 



cording to the situation and season, and in these 

 small enclosures are kept troughs replenished regu- 

 larly twice a day with some grain mixture. English 

 feeders use great amounts of "cake," which is 

 either of linseed or cottonseed. This cake is made 

 at American oil mills where by pressure oil is ex- 

 tracted from the crushed seed. American feeders 

 usually buy "oilmeal," or ground cake, whereas our 

 British cousins prefer to buy the actual cakes and 

 break them on the farm into bits as large perhaps as 

 hickory nuts, or somewhat smaller for young lambs. 

 English lambs come from the hurdles at the age of 

 three or four months weighing 20 to 100 pounds. 

 They will do as well in America, under right man- 

 agement, as the writer has frequently demonstrated 

 in his own practice. The fact is that one must keep 

 the ewes in any case and must feed them, so that 

 there is a certain fixed expense connected with rear- 

 ing the lambs. This expense produces a certain 

 amount of growth; now by the addition of supple- 

 mentary foods this growth may be greatly increased 

 at very slight expense. The amount of extra food 

 consumed by the young lamb to make an extra pound 

 of growth will not cost more than one or two cents. 

 To make a pound of growth on him after he has 

 left his mother will cost from 3% to 7 cents. Then 

 too, the early growth is what brings the highest 

 price. And again the lamb that matures very early 

 and gets away to market escapes a hundred ills that 

 lie in wait for the lamb that remains on the farm 

 for nearly a year; so, altogether, the arguments are 



