158 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA 



roots and about the base of these grasses. Lambs 

 lying in shade nearby become hungry, and venturing 

 into the sun a little way nibble at these rich grasses. 

 It is worth noting that sheep will the more greedily 

 eat grass that grows strong, from manured land, 

 than that which is thin and tough growing on poor 

 soil. The lambs then nibbling this thick grass, which 

 is thus kept short, take in many germs of stomach 

 worms and other parasites which their mothers have 

 deposited there with their manure. Thus disease 

 creeps into the flock. In England the writer has 

 seen shepherds putting fences of hurdles about trees 

 to prevent ewes lying beneath them when on grass, 

 and explaining that they found when the ewes laid 

 in the shade of those trees "they took cold from the 

 draughts and coughed." The facts were correctly 

 observed but the reasoning was defective ; it was not 

 the " draught " that made the sheep cough but the 

 throat worms and lung worms instead that gained 

 entrance from the infected grass of the tree 's shade. 



MARKETING THE SPRING LAMB. 



Through Virginia and Kentucky there are many 

 sheep breeders who make a practice of growing their 

 lambs on grass alone, having them born usually in 

 March and putting them off fat in June. They usu- 

 ally contract them ahead for about $6 per cwt. They 

 find this business very profitable and thus their 

 rough lands devoted to sheep pastures steadily im- 

 prove rather than deteriorate. 



It is a temptation to the young shepherd to keep 



