HANDLING SHEEP ON THE RANGE 143 



product has more than doubled, western wool having 

 sold as high as 25 cents per pound in the summer of 1909, 

 which was the maximum for recent years. 



Increase in Cost of Production. With the increase in 

 prices, however, has come a material increase in the cost 

 of raising. Herders' wages are higher than they were 

 ten years ago. Shearers receive much more than they 

 formerly were paid, and although machine-shearing has 

 come into vogue on most of the ranches, enabling the 

 owners to handle their flocks much more expeditiously 

 than in former years, the average cost of the two meth- 

 ods is however approximately the same. 'An average 

 hand shearer will clip sixty to seventy sheep per day, 

 while the improved machines enable a shearer to handle 

 200, and some exceed this, the Australian record being 

 316 sheep in an eight-hour day. The profit in machine 

 shearing is, however, in the rapidity with which a band 

 can be shorn and returned to the range. 



More provision is made for winter than in the old 

 days, and large sums are spent by sheep-men in provid- 

 ing haystacks in order to guard against losses from that 

 source. 



Grazing Leased Land. The increase of settlers upon 

 the open ranges has forced the sheepmen to lease pri- 

 vate lands on which to graze their herds, and large areas 

 of railroad lands upon the winter ranges in the mountain 

 states have either been bought outright or else are leased 

 by the wool-growers. They banded together to lease 

 these lands in huge tracts, and then parceled the ranges 

 out among themselves, according to previous agree- 

 ments. 



The best example of this sort of co-operation is in 

 the celebrated Red Desert country in western Wyoming 



