VII. 



MERINO SHEEP. 



10(>.<5 



according to their ages. A plan of a sheep-house, combining also a lamb-house, is given by Kraft in his 

 Rustic Designs. It is wholly built of unbarked spars or young fir-trees. The plan [fig. K95.) contains tour 

 close apartments with doors for the lambs v a , and four others with racks for the sheep {!>). The elevation 

 89.5 896 



(Jig. S9S.) snows a gallery [c), which surrounds the building, and is used as a passage for viewing the 

 sheep, handling them with the crook, and at night for the perambulations 

 of a watch-dog. The roof being twenty feet from the floor, the interior is 

 abundantly airy, which for sheep is an important object. Another design 

 in the same work (Jig. 897.) is accompanied by an elegant Indian watch- 

 tower, with apartments therein for the shepherd. 

 7227. The economy of the suckling-house is as follows : — The sheep which 

 I _— | — , a — ,■ - begin to lamb about Michaelmas are kept in the close during the day, and 



IX in the house during the night, until they have produced twenty or thirty 



lambs. These lambs are then put into a lamb-house, which is kept con- 

 stantly well littered with clean wheat straw ; and chalk, both in lump and 

 in powder, is provided for them to lick, in order to prevent looseness, and 

 thereby preserve the lambs in health. As a prevention against gnawing the 

 boards'or eating each other's wool, a little wheat straw is placed, with the 

 ears downwards, in a rack within their reach, with which they amuse them- 

 selves, and of which they eat a small quantity. In this house they are kept, 

 with great care and attention, until tit for the butcher. 



72-28. The mothers of the lambs are turned, every night at eight o'clock, 

 into the lamb-house to their offspring. At six o'clock in the morning these 

 mothers are separated from then lambs, and turned into the pastures; and 

 at eight o'clock such ewes as have lost their own lambs, and those ewes whose 

 lambs are sold, are brought in and he'd by the head till the lambs by turns 

 suck them clean: they are then turned into the pasture, and at twelve 

 o'clock the mothers of the lambs are driven from the pasture into the lamb-house for an hour, in the 

 course of which time each lamb is suckled by its mother. At four o'clock all the ewes that have not 

 lambs of their own are again brought to the lamb-house and held for the lambs to suck ; and at eight the 

 mothers of the lambs arebrought to them for the night. 



7229. This method of suckling is continued all the year. The breeders select such of the lambs as become 

 fat enough, and of proper age (about eight weeks old'!, for slaughter, and send them to markets during De- 

 cember and three or four succeeding months, at prices which vary from one guinea to tour, and the rest 

 of the vear at about two guineas each. This is severe work for the ewes, and some of them die under 

 excess of exhaustion. However, care is taken that they have plenty ol food ; for when green food .viz. 

 turnips, cole, rve, tares, clover, &c.) begins to fail, brewer's grains are given them in troughs, and second- 

 crop hay in racks, as well to support the ewes as to supply the lambs with plenty of milk ; for if that should 

 not be abundant, the lambs would become stunted, in which case no food could fatten them. (Middlesex 

 Report, p. 3o5.) 



Sect. VII. Probable Improvement to be derived from Crosses of the Merino Breed of 



Slieep 

 7230. The Merino, or Spanish variety of the (Tvis yf ries, is supposed by Rozier and 

 other French writers to have been originally imported from Africa to Spain. It is, 

 however, at least as probable that they are indigenous to that country, or, if originally 

 imported, that they have become modified to what they are by the soil and climate. 



7231. Merinos first attracted attention in this country in 1764, in consequence of the reports of travellers, 

 and a letter bv Don John Bowlev to Peter Collinson, published in the Gentleman's Magazine for that 

 year. A few were imported in 17X8, and more in 1791, and placed on the king's farm at Windsor, under 

 the care of Sir Joseph Banks, who was then constituted his Majesty's shepherd. The first sale of stock 

 was made in 1S00; and from these, a flock imported from Spain in 1801 by Lord Somerville, and some 

 other importations bv different persons subsequently, have sprung all the Merinos and Merino rams in 

 the empire. Since that period, a number of eminent breeders and scientific agriculturists have cultivated 

 this breed both alone and by crossing, but especially Dr. Parry and Lord Somerville-, and though the 

 utility which its introduction may ultimately prove to the country can by no means be estimated at 

 present, that it has already done much good by directing the public attention to the subject there can be 

 no doubt; and many are of opinion, that by it the fleeces of our short- woolled sheep may be so improved 

 as to render them tit substitutes for imported Spanish wool. 



7-J32. Dr. Parry's experiments with the Merino breed were begun nearly at the same time with the 

 king's. His farm was elevated, exposed, and unfit for any other purpose than breeding ; and he fixed 

 on the Ryeland breed, as one of the finest woolled varieties of British sheep, for crossing with Merino 

 rams. His only object was the improvement of the fleece. 



72-33. The effect of the fourth cross of the Merino ram, according to the opinion of sheep cultivators on 

 the Continent, on any breed of ewes, however coarse and long in the fleece, will be to give progeny with 

 short wool equal to the Spanish. Of the truth of this proposition, however, Dr. Parry justly expresses 

 some doubts, derived from his own experience and that of others. But it is certain, he ados, that one 

 cross more will, in most cases, effect the desired purpose. If we suppose, he says, the result of the admix- 

 ture of the blood of the Merino ram to be always in an exact arithmetical proportion, and state the 

 native blood in the ewe as &t ; then the first cross would give gf of the Merino; the second £f ; the 

 third |f ; the fourth |f ; the fifth |^ ; the sixth | 3 , and so on. In other words, the first cross would leave 

 thirty-two parts in sixty-four, or half of the English quality; the second sixteen parts, or one fourth; 

 the third eight parts, or one eighth ; the fourth four parts, or one sixteenth ; the filth two parts, or one 

 thirtv -second ; the sixth one part, or one sixty-fourth, and so on. Now, if the filaments ol the W iltslnre, 

 or any other coarse wool, be in diameter double that of the Ryeland, it is obvious, that, according to the 

 above statement, it would require exactly one cross more to bring the hybrid wool of tin former to the 

 same fineness as that of the latter. This, he believes, very exactly corresponds with the tact. The dif- 



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