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weeds, bushes, briers, fallen leaves, brush, etc., and they are 

 truly valuable for keeping lands clean of these. In winter 

 short grass and corn-fodder is all that is required, even by 

 the breeding flock, and I have never found it necessary to 

 feed grain of any kind to them at any season. 



A dry shelter is desirable for them, especially to the fe- 

 males in kidding season ; though my flock of males and 

 wethers, even after they have been shorn in April, has 

 never had any protection than what they could obtain 

 around a hay or straw stack. 



The females have no perceptible odor at any season, and 

 the males only during the breeding season, when they uri- 

 nate on their fore legs and beards; but their habits and 

 odor are much less offensive than of the native goat; and 

 their language of love is much less demonstrative and 

 noisy. 



In breeding they are precocious, the females being ca- 

 pable of breeding at seven months, and the males of propa- 

 gation still earlier. As the females carry their young only 

 five months, it is possible for them to have young within 

 twelve months old; but I do not think it advisable that 

 either sex breed in less than twelve or eighteen months old. 

 Generally the pure-bred animals have but one at a birth; 

 while grade and full-blooded females will have from one to 

 five/and with reasonable care will always raise as many 

 kids as there are mothers in the flock, and often more. If 

 the weather is pleasant, and the kids, at their birth, can 

 once get dry, and stand up and suck, they require but little 

 attention afterwards. The mothers may sometimes lose or 

 leave them in large pastures, especially if they have more 

 than one, when they are very young. Like deer, they in- 

 cline to leave their young, and return to and suckle them at 

 intervals, during the first few days after birth. A protracted 

 cold rain is often fatal to a kid at the time of its birth ; it 

 is thereiore desirable to house the females at night, during 

 the period of parturition. The males should be bred to the 



