MODERN SHEEP: BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 75 



October and November, so that they are the principal sources of 

 the supply of house and early lamb, which about Christmas and 

 the following month is esteemed a great luxury and accordingly 

 commands a high price. * * * At Weyhill, one of the largest 

 sheep fairs in the kingdom, they form a very large proportion of 

 the sheep offered for sale. It is the ewes in lamb that are driven 

 in the month of October a distance frequently of fifty or sixty 

 miles, which journey, occupying upward of a week, they generally 

 bear remarkably well." 



Mr. H. Mayo, a famous breeder in the neighborhood of the 

 county seat of Dorsetshire, writing of his favorite breed in 1871, 



Dorset Ewe Lambs Photo by Doctor Arbuckle. 



informs us that the ewes will take the ram two or three months 

 before any other breed of sheep, and that when the lambs are 

 yeaned in October and November, and both they and their mothers 

 receive good feeding, the former will generally be found ready for 

 the butcher in about ten or eleven weeks; nor does it take long to 

 make Mie ewes ripe afterward, and they will average from 20 

 to 25 pounds per quarter. To obtain early lambs for fatten- 

 ing he generally makes use of a Sussex "ram, as the lambs are con- 

 sidered a little "better quality with the cross. He lambs his usual 

 flock about Christmas, and shears about the middle of June, when 

 the lambs yield from 2% to 3 pounds of wool, and the ewes from 5 

 to 6 pounds. 



Mr. Paull, a famous Dorset breeder, pays tribute to the merits 

 of the Dorset sheep as follows: "The wool of the Horn lamb is 

 very much sought after for its peculiar whiteness and the fine 



