WESTERN LAMB FEEDING 269 



creasing scale. It is a settled industry, not without 

 its risks, yet as certain of profit as any feeding 

 business can well be. 



Colorado lambs are the product of Colorado al- 

 falfa and Kansas and Nebraska corn. There is 

 sometimes a little locally-grown wheat or barley fed, 

 when it is cheap enough, but shelled corn and alfalfa 

 form probably 95 per cent of the foods used. 



In early days the Colorado feeders depended al- 

 most altogether upon the lambs of New Mexico and 

 southern Colorado for a supply of feeders. The 

 reputation of Fort Collins' lambs was made first 

 with these Mexicans. In more recent years lambs 

 have come there from other regions, notably from 

 Utah and Wyoming. The process of feeding lambs 

 in Colorado is admirably simple. There are yards 

 built of six-inch boards, with cracks between them 

 wide enough to permit the lambs to thrust their 

 heads in and eat between them. Hay is then piled 

 along these fences right on the ground (which is 

 usually dry in that sunny clime) and the lambs eat 

 it standing with their necks through the fence. Two 

 or three times a day men go along and throw the 

 hay up afresh. The hay is drawn from great ricks 

 standing in the alfalfa meadows. Little of it is ever 

 put in barns, which hardly exist in the sense that 

 they are used in the East. 



Grain is fed in flat-bottomed troughs in the yards. 

 There is often an arrangement of yards so that one 

 may be used as a feeding yard for two or more pens. 

 In that way the grain may be put in before the 



