190 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA 



In fact, the shading of the ground between the corn 

 rows by the wide leaves of the pumpkin vines serves 

 to help conserve the moisture when it is most needed 

 and the corn is often the better for the association 

 of the vines. It is safer, however, to plant pumpkins 

 by themselves. 



Pumpkins serve the flock in two ways : first, as a 

 direct and healthful food of considerable nutritive 

 value and yet never dangerous from excessive rich- 

 ness, and next from the direct medicinal value of 

 the seeds. Pumpkin seeds are among the best ver- 

 mifuges known. They should never be removed 

 from the pumpkins but fed all together, and if fed 

 in considerable amounts, the direct and immediate 

 improvement in the flock will be very apparent. 

 Tapeworms have never troubled the writer's flock 

 in the least and no other reason can be attributed 

 than the annual liberal pumpkin feeding. 



The way to feed pumpkins is to strew them about 

 the pasture without cutting them open at all, or at 

 least cutting only a few of them. If many are cut 

 the sheep eat only the soft inside parts at first, with 

 the seeds, and might in this way get too many seeds 

 for their good, whereas when they must gnaw away 

 into the pumpkin they will eat it up clean before at- 

 tacking another. The pumpkins keep better to be 

 scattered over the field than to be piled in heaps, at 

 least before the frost strikes them. 



The secret in growing pumpkins is, first, to have 

 the land rich, then to plant a great surplus of seeds. 

 The striped cucumber beetle revels on pumpkin 



