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hay designed for their food. Indeed it would be better to 

 run joists across the barn about seven feet from the floor, 

 which will add a large additional storage room. A trough 

 should be set on the floor running with the eaves, same 

 length with the shed, and a rack made to rest on a pole 

 placed immediately above the trough, not so high but that 

 the sheep can easily reach the hay. At the other end of the 

 rack strips can rest upon the joists above, making a space 

 six or seven feet across at the top. With this arrangement 

 a man in the loft can easily fill the rack from the hay above, 

 which can be pulled down by means of a hook on a pole 

 within reach of the sheep as they eat it. Thus the sheep 

 will have free access to food at all times of the day, and 

 being of that class of animals called ruminant, they, in a 

 state of nature, are perpetual feeders. Another plan, and 

 it is a very good one, is to place the shed at one end of the 

 enclosure, making one side and two ends serve the purpose 

 of the fence. It is only necessary to build the center build- 

 ing when the flock is over the ordinary size for 50, 75, or 

 ven 100 head. The cheap shelters referred to will be suffi- 

 cient to protect them, for aside from the nights, we rarely 

 have weather sufficiently cold to make the shelter desirable 

 all day ; in fact it is more a protection against cold rains and 

 ravages of dogs at night that these shelters are chiefly val- 

 uable, for in Tennessee we never have the severe cold and 

 deep snows that the Northern flock masters have to contend 

 with. Through our most severe winters we have but few 

 days so cold that sheep will not leave shelter to graze. It 

 is as important, however, for our farmers to have such shel- 

 ters as we have described in order to be successful in sheep - 

 husbandry, as it is for the Northern farmer to have his close 

 and expensive barn, for the cold rains of the South are as 

 apt to produce disease in our flocks as the deep snows and 

 icy winds of the North are to produce famine. 



One thing is essential in making these protective build- 

 ings, and that is they ought to be clean. There must not be 



