WESTERN LAMB FEEDING 275 



the next, jumping often just at the right time to fail 

 to alight on their feet. It is a curious fact that in 

 Nebraska and Kansas few farmers feed their own 

 grain and hay, preferring to sell to great operators 

 who feed in central plants many thousands of sheep 

 and lambs. Thus is the manure lost to farms that 

 will some day need it, and mountains of richness 

 are heaped up outside of feeding corrals to prove 

 an embarrassment to the owner. This system is 

 wrong and invites disaster. The man who pro- 

 duces the feed should feed it at home. A man can 

 afford to devote his time to 500 sheep or lambs in 

 winter ; thus he has left on the farm much of the fer- 

 tility taken from it in crops and can readily return 

 it to his fields. Feeding his own crops he runs 

 small risk of loss in his operations. 



FEEDING MILL SCREENINGS. 



Minnesota is at present the great state for feed- 

 ing screenings. These screenings come from the 

 great mills along the upper Mississippi and else- 

 where. They contain a little shrunken wheat, a 

 good deal of weed seed, largely of pigeon grass, and 

 bits of straw and trash. There are many thousands 

 of tons of screenings available every year. Most of 

 this material is used by the large operators, who 

 feed from a few to many thousands. They gen- 

 erally use sheds provided with self-feeding bins 

 holding many bushels of screenings. The manage- 

 ment of one of their plants is admirably simple : the 

 lambs are bought, usually of a fairly good size and 



