248 History of the English Landed Interest. 



it is highly advisable to fold all winter on such dry grass 

 land. It must not be attempted on arable land, nor on moist 

 grass, but on dry gravelly pastures the safety to sheep is un- 

 doubted, and the benefit to the grass prodigious. But there is 

 another method of gaining all the benefits of folding quite 

 through the winter, and on all soils ; this is to confine them at 

 night in a sheep yard, well and regularly littered with straw, 

 stubble, or fern ; by which means you keep your flock quite 

 warm and healthy in bad seasons, and at the same time raise 

 a surprising quantity of dung ; so great a quantity, if you have 

 plenty of litter, that the profit will be better than folding on 

 the land. And a great improvement in this method would be 

 the giving the sheep all their food (except their pasture) in 

 such yard ; viz., hay and turnips ; for which purpose they 

 should be brought up not only at night, but also to be baited 

 about noon ; but if their pasture be at a distance, they should 

 then come to the yard earlier in the evening and go out the 

 later in the morning, instead of baiting at noon. This is a 

 practice which cannot be too much recommended, for so warm 

 a lodging is a great matter to young lambs, and will tend 

 much to forwarding their growth ; the sheep will also be kept 

 in good health, and what is a point of vast consequence to all 

 farms, the quantity of dung raised will be very great. If this 

 method is pursued through the months of December, January, 

 February, March, and April, with plenty of litter 100 sheep 

 will make a dunghill of at least ()0 loads of excellent stuff, 

 which when rotten will manure two acres of land amply ; 

 whereas 100 sheep folded (supposing the grass dry enough) 

 will not in that time equally manure one acre." 



On another page Young suggests the separation of the 

 fattening from the lean sheep, observing that many sheep, 

 particularly wethers, when fattened on turnips, become so 

 dainty that they waste half the turnips, unless a second lot of 

 lean sheep follows after them to eat up their leavings. 



There is much in this description of management to which 

 the modern shepherd would take exception. Provided the soil 

 be moderately light, the whole flock would be healthier were 

 it kept in two folds (the ewes in one and the rest of the sheep 



