3S4 REARING AND FEEDING OF ANIMALS. 



Before winter, it is a general practice, the utility of which is experienced in 

 a very elevated country, to smear the skins of the sheep with a mixture of tar 

 and butter. The practice indeed is found to deteriorate the wool, by staining 

 it, and rendering it unfit for receiving the brighter colours in dyeing. It is 

 found, however, conducive to the health of the stock in an inclement country, 

 destroying vermin, of itself an important object to the health of sheep, and 

 acting to a considerable degree in defending the animals from cold and mois- 

 ture. 



It is a general error on merely stock farms to plough np too much of the land 

 for crop, or to intersperse the cultivated land with the range of the sheep pas- 

 ture. The object, of tillage on such farms is to raise turnips and clover-hay, 

 for keeping the stock throughout the winter months, and, this being attained, 

 the farmer ought rarely to carry his system of tillage further. 



In many cases, indeed, the farmer of a mountain farm has also a sufficient 

 quantity of lowland ground to combine the practice, both of rearing sheep and 

 feeding them. This, when it occurs, is beneficial; but when it does not occur, 

 the proper occupation of a mountain farm is to rear sheep, and not to feed 

 them; and the general principle of management is to sell the sheep which are 

 reared to the feeder as soon as they have come to tolerable maturity, that is, 

 either after the first winter, when hoggets, or after the second winter, when 

 dinmonts. 



Reared in yet more elevated districts than the Cheviot, are the Black- faced 

 heath sheep. These are the hardiest of all our races of sheep, and in the parts 

 of the country where they are principally cultivated, they must depend chiefly 

 or entirely on the natural herbage of the farm. 



The rams are generally put to the ewes after the middle of November, and 

 one ram is assigned to sixty ewes or less. The lambs intended for wethers 

 are castrated somewhat later than the other sheep: they are weaned late in 

 July, and the ewes milked sometimes for a few weeks. The sheep are shorn 

 from the end of June till the middle of July; and when they are to be washed, 

 they are driven to a pool or deep stream, and forced to leap from the bank. 

 Th'is being a very wild race of sheep, the same delicacy of management is not 

 necessary or practicable as in the case of the more docile breeds of the plains. 

 They are shorn in the same manner as the other sheep; and opportunity is 

 then taken to place upon them their distinguishing marks. In all cases they 

 should be smeared; for though, as in the case of the Cheviot sheep, the wool 

 is injured by the process, this is more than compensated by the benefits result- 

 ing to the flock. 



The food of these hardy sheep is in summer and winter the same; and all 

 that can be generally done is to supply them with some coarse hay during 

 long-continued falls of snow. They are sold at the ages which suit the nature 

 of the farm and the convenience of the breeder. 



The management of the other kinds of down or moorland sheep need not be 

 detailed. These breeds are generally in low situations, where the difficulty of 

 procuring food is comparatively little. The nearer the management of this 

 class of sheep approaches to that of the larger sheep of the plains, already de- 

 scribed, the more perfect will it be. 



Diseases of shecp.-^-The diseases of these valuable creatures are sometimes 

 of a very formidable nature, and baffle all the means of remedy which are 

 known to us. Of these diseases the most dreaded is rot, which often extends 

 over whole districts of a country. 



It is known that this disease is favoured or produced by a humid state of the 

 soil and atmosphere. It is in wet seasons that it prevails the most, and is the 

 most fatal. By draining land the tendency to it is lessened or taken away. 

 Often sheep are rotted by pasturing on the wet parts of the farm, whereas if 

 kept from these parts they remain free from disease. Nay, a single sheep that 

 has a disposition to pick up its food in moist places will die, while the others 

 will not be affected. 



The animal affected does not all at once show symptoms of disease; for some- 

 times it remains a considerable time in apparent health, and long after it has 

 been removed from the place of infection, droops and dies. Sheep are every 

 year purchased in seeming health, and yet after a time they are found to be 





