Soiling Sheep. 177 



Therefore, to make them do their best in this coun- 

 try, or to equal English-grown sheep that are kept 

 feeding all the time, some way must he provided to 

 accomplish the same end. We must remember that 

 feed is mightier than breed. In fact, feed has been 

 the making of breeds. Feed is, at least, the founda- 

 tion of all modern breeds. Select animals from the 

 choicest prize-winning flocks, the best in England 

 or America, and neglect to feed them, and they soon 

 degenerate into an ordinary race from whence they 

 originally came. Selecting and coupling help to fix 

 type, but food makes the breed. When a sheep 

 breeder in America will make his sheep eat as much 

 as an English shepherd, then he can grow in Ameri- 

 ca as good specimens as they grow in England. 



After meeting my Waterloo in the show ring at 

 the State fair, as already referred to, and not being 

 sufficiently forehanded to buy a lot of imported 

 sheep, as was the yearly custom of my principal 

 competitors, I was either obliged to give up show- 

 ing or take a back seat or reach for the prize in 

 some other way. It so happened that my sheep were 

 pastured the next year in a field adjoining the barn, 

 and they were allowed the freedom of their winter 

 quarters, where they were obliged to come and 

 drink, and, as may be imagined, during the hot 

 weather they spent the greater part of the day in 

 this shed or under the shade of a board fence. In 

 bringing in the soiling crops for the cows, the wagon 

 passed the sheep shed, and as there was never in my 

 estimation anything too good for my Cotswold ewes 

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