TEGS. 127 



sheep's lives by this prompt action to give up the practice. Aperients 

 and medicines which contract the size of blood corpuscles are 

 very valuable, but they are not always available, nor are they 

 as prompt in their action, and it is often a case of immediate 

 treatment or death. However, a careful shepherd never allows a 

 sheep to die a natural death ; when he sees that there is little chance 

 for it, he kills it and dresses it, so as to make it marketable. It 

 is now illegal to sell the flesh of sheep " killed to save their lives," 

 but anything more absurd than to prohibit in the case where 

 an animal, otherwise in good health, is killed because of a quickly 

 developed blood pressure on the brain, and before the system 

 is affected, it would be difficult to imagine. It is different where 

 the sheep had been drugged. The advantage of a well-balanced 

 mixture of corn is easily recognised when the danger from one 

 in which too much nitrogen is present is understood. 



All roots should be sliced for fattening sheep when once they 

 get on to the harder kinds. It is best to eat the swedes in mid- 

 winter, and to follow these with kohl-rabi after the turn of the 

 year ; though the early Small Top Kohl-rabi are essentially autumn 

 food. No farmer should allow the first week of December to pass 

 without having a portion of the earliest and ripest swedes sufficient 

 to supply the sheep for a month safely clamped. Neglect to 

 do this is the source of great waste during frost ; the roots are 

 more difficult and more expensive to get up when frozen in the 

 ground, and are less valuable as food owing to their excessively 

 cold condition ; while in very severe frosts they are totally des- 

 troyed, and great difficulty is experienced in getting a supply 

 of food during the remainder of the winter season. This advice 

 may seem unnecessary as it is now over twenty years since there 

 have been December and January frosts which have imperilled 

 the swede crop. Yet in thirteen years previously there were seven 

 seasons which were so severe at that time that the losses by those 

 who had not clamped their swedes were very seriously heavy. 

 Experience in the long past has shown that there are periods 

 lasting over several years of mildness or severity, and cold winters 

 will doubtless return. As a rule turnips may be pulled by hand. 

 If very tightly in the ground a turnip-pecker is necessary. This 

 is also needed where sheep gnaw the roots, as, if the cups are 

 not pecked up, they are wasted. The hardy variety of kohl- 

 rabi, particularly if not overripe, will withstand all but the most 

 severe frosts, and need not be clamped. If ripe, the plants may 

 be got up and clamped in the same way as swedes. If the tegs have 

 been liberally treated throughout the season they should be fattened 

 off and sold from time to time as they become fit for the butcher, 

 so that they are sold out by the end of March. Those which have 

 to be run on and sold as wethers should give little cause for anxiety ; 



K2 



