[253] 



ingly valuable, but for wool and mutton combined, where carcass also is 

 desired, the cross 1 have mentioned I think is decidedly preferable. 



Sheep sometimes shed their wool, and I have heard old farmers attrib. 

 ute it to feeding them corn. Such is not the true cause. Any sudden 

 change if suddenly fatted from poverty, or allowed to become rapidly 

 thin from good flesh, they will shed their wool. If from any cause they 

 are sick, causing them to have fever, as from garget, swelled udder, caused 

 by loss of lamb, they will shed their wool. 



I said nothing about feeding or grazing; every one will control that to 

 suit himself; nor as to the dogs, which is the greatest obstacle of all to 

 successful and profitable sheep-raising. The more we can get interested 

 in sheep, the fewer friends the dog will have. 



The following essay, also written by Mr. Crutchfield, 

 though going over some of the same ground, is well worthy 

 a place in this treatise : 



Gentlemen of the Stock-breeders' Association : 



Your president, Mark S. Cockrill, has done me the honor to impose 

 upon me the duty of preparing an essay on Sheep Husbandry in Tennes- 

 see, to be read before your convention. I would have much preferred 

 that the duty should have fallen upon some one more competent to do 

 justice to the subject, and of greater experience than I have. 



As farmers and breeders of live stock, we owe to each other our expe- 

 rience in our various vocations that we may each reap the benefit of the 

 other's experience. This interchange of opinion can better be attained 

 through organized associations of farmers and breeders, like that of the 

 Stock Breeders' Association, and through the agricultural press, to which 

 we all ought to be, if we are not, subscribers and contributors. 



Sheep husbandry had its origin co-existent with man, and has co-ex- 

 tended with him through all the various ages to the present time. It is 

 not, however, with its ancient history that we have now to do, only in so 

 far as it assists us in tracing back the breeding of the many species or va- 

 rieties of the present generation, and accepting those best suited to our 

 purposes. 



Strictly speaking, there is no sheep indigenous to our continent, unless 

 it be the Rocky Mountain sheep, and that, I believe, partakes more of the 

 nature of the goat than the sheep. The sheep most numerous with us, 

 called the Native, or the Scrub, are of foreign origin, brought over to this 

 country by our ancestors from different portions of Europe, each bringing 

 the favorite breed of their immediate district, and from them sprang the 

 race of sheep now known as Natives. 



From no care at all in breeding, except to let them breed indiscrimi- 

 nately among themselves, without any regard to improvement, their type, 



