256 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA 



These lambs will not usually fatten off at an early 

 age and may materially affect the result. 



Let us digress here to consider for a moment a 

 proposition having in it great possibilities of profit 

 for the feeder and offering to the rancher a ready 

 means of disposing of his aging ewe stuff without 

 too much sacrifice. The rancher may cull out his 

 aged ewes before they have reached too decrepit a 

 condition, discarding any that have spoiled udders 

 of defective teats, and putting them on the best and 

 tenderest grass he can find. Put with them good 

 blocky mutton rams as early as possible in sum- 

 mer. He ought to get a down or Dorset ram for 

 this purpose, since the long-wools do not get lambs 

 fattening best at a very early age. 



Then he can sell the ewes, bred, to men who make 

 a business of fattening winter lambs, and get a great 

 deal more for them than it has cost him to give 

 them this treatment. The writer several years ago 

 called the attention of sheep growers and feeders 

 to the possibilities of this practice and it has already 

 been begun in a small way with the probability that 

 the practice will become more common as the ad- 

 vantage becomes known, and especially as western 

 sheep ranching narrows down to a state of settled 

 practice of good methods. 



The age when a ewe should be discarded varies 

 considerably with the breed and also with the dis- 

 trict where she is kept and the manner of keeping. 

 In England among the Dorset breeders it is the cus- 

 tom to take three or four crops of lambs by a Dorset 



