32 The Pence Question in the South. 



J. H. Moore of Oakley, Arkansas, an experienced sheep breeder, com- 

 menced sheep raising in 1854, and wintered entirely with cotton seed and 

 what grass the sheep could get in the cotton fields, and, with interruptions 

 growing out of the war, has continued the practice always with success. Here 

 is a leaf from his experience : 



In 1879 1 had 31 ewes, which were wintered during last winter entirely on cotton seed. They 

 dropped 53 lambs, of which I saved 47. I fed these more seed, as I had plenty, and fed on the 

 ground, which caused the waste of nearly one-half the seed. Cotton seed can be purchased at 

 the gins at from three to four dollars per ton of 2,000 pounds. One ton will winter from 10 to 

 15 sheep when fed on the ground ; if fed in troughs, it would winter 20 to 30 sheep. 



I suppose the seed must be good feed, as the sheep look well. A neighbor of mine, who was 

 a large sheep-breeder in Ohio, says that one ton to forty sheep is enough when they have the 

 run of the pasture, and that he can winter well a sheep at ten cents per head. 



There are many plantations in the South that are too much worn to make the cultivation of 

 cotton profitable, that could be brought to their original fertility by feeding sheep with cotton 

 seed on the field. These plantations could be divided into four fields, one of which could be set 

 to Bermuda grass, which will afford grazing for as many sheep as eight or ten per acre as long 

 as it would be healthy to keep them on it ; one field be sown with cow-pease, and fed off the 

 ground during the winter ; and, after the pease and vines were consumed, the sheep could be 

 fed on the field the balance of the winter on cotton seed, and their droppings, together with ma- 

 nure from the pea-vine, would double the crop of cotton ; and by this means the planter would 

 enrich his land and himself at same time. 



I find Bermuda grass as good grazing as any I have ever tried ; but it is ouly a summer grass, 

 and seems to do best during hot dry weather, but requires to be kept closely grazed, as it gets 

 hard when old ; but this could be remedied by keeping cattle and sheer/ in alternate pastures. 



My experience teaches me that sheep can be wintered in the South at a cost of ten to fifteen 

 cents per head, and, if credit be given them for the weeds and briers they destroy, and the land 

 they manure, the cost is less than nothing. Another profit could be added to sheep husbandry 

 at the South, and that is the increased value of worn-out cotton plantations, which might be 

 computed at ten per cent, on the original cost of the land. 



Says Mr. Hayes, (Sheep Husbandry in the South) : 



" A most important branch of sheep husbandry, in its relations to the improvement of a 

 country, is that where the culture of sheep is made auxiliary to a mixed husbandry The highest 

 advantage of this system is the improvement of the land. 



"Sheep are the only animals which do not exhaust the land upon which they feed, but perma- 

 nently improve it. Horned cattle, especially cows in milk, by continued grazing, ultimately 

 exhaust the pastures of their phosphates. In England, the pastures of the county of Chester, 

 famous as a cheese district, are kept up only by the constant use of bone dust. Sheep, on the 

 other hand, through the peculiar nutritiousness of their manure, and the facility with which 

 it is distributed, are found to be the most economical and certain means of constantly renewing 

 the productiveness of the land. By the combination of sheep husbandry with wheat culture, 

 lands in England, which, in the time of Elizabeth, produced on an average, six and a half 

 bushels of wheat per acre, produce now over thirty bushels. For these reasons, the recent prac- 

 tical writers in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, pronounce that, while 

 there is no profit in growing sheep in England simply for their mutton and wool, sheep hus- 

 bandry is still an indispensable necessity, as the so!6 means of keeping up the land. 



" Experience in the United States leads to similar conclusions. Mr. Stilson of Wisconsin, by 

 keeping sheep, is able to raise his twenty-four bushels of wheat to the acre, while the average 

 yield of wheat in "Wisconsin is but ten bushels. There are cases in Vermont where sheep-farm- 

 ers have been compelled to abandon one farm after another, as they became too fertile for proft- 

 able sheep-growing. 



" The farmers of Connecticut in former times, it would appear, bad a full appreciation of the 

 fertilizing influences of the sheep. In the town of Goshen, in Connecticut, according to my in- 

 formant, the public roads were anciently laid out eight rods wide ; and in these roads it was the 

 custom to pasture in common the sheep belonging to the individual proprietors of the town, 

 which were taken care of by a man and a boy, at the expense of the town authorities. The 

 yarding of the sheep for each night, in order that the benefits of the manure might not be lost, 

 was let out at the town meeting. On the evening of the 27th of May, just preceding the fa- 

 mous cold summer of 181fi, it came to the turn of a certain farmer to yard the sheep for the night. 

 He had no field fenced which would hold the sheep, some eight hundred in number, except a 

 field planted with corn, which had already come up. Preferring to sacrifice the corn to losing 

 the manure, he turned the flock into this very field. On that night the frost cut off all the corn 

 in the town, and the sheep had cut off our farmer's, who congratulated himself, in the morning, 

 that he was no worse off than his neighbors. He soon found that he was better off. The sheep 

 by cutting of the top shoots had saved the plants from being killed by the frost, and the drop- 

 pings from the sheep in one night had so enriched the field that it produced the largest crop of 

 corn that had been grown in the town for years." 



Says Mr. Howard, in his excellent paper on the condition of Agriculture in 

 the Cotton States, giving his own practical tests on Georgia lands : 



