166 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



when they are eating hay and roots, there is not so much neces- 

 sity for this. I have never had any trouble since I have done 

 that. 



Mr. Stebbins. — I will state, in regard to the manufacture of 

 manure from sheep, that I have repeatedly made a big ox-cart 

 load of manure with one sheep. The sheep is bedded thor- 

 oughly, and occasionally during the winter, tobacco stalks are 

 put in ; and it makes as fine a bed of manure as the sheep jvould 

 make if there was not a particle of matter put under it. 



Mr. FiSK. — So far as my experience goes, I am altogether in 

 favor of coarse-vvoolled sheep. Not that I expect to get so much 

 money for the fleece as I should from fine-wool sheep, but our 

 object is the rearing of lambs. Nothing has been said with 

 regard to the profit of raising early lambs for the shambles. 

 Now, the coarse-woolled lambs in Shelburne bring six dollars a 

 head, when they are three or four months old. The last sum- _ 

 mer, I sold every lamb of mine, the first of July, for five dollars 

 and seventy-five cents. They were dropped from the first of 

 March to the fifteenth. Now, a Merino lamb must be kept all 

 summer long, and then, as a general thing, must be sold for 

 three and a half or four dollars. 



A few years ago, I bought five Cotswold sheep, and gave oi^ 

 hundred dollars for them. I took them off nine miles, and put 

 them on one of the highest patches of ground, but a good pas- 

 ture, and they wintered there. They had a barn to go to out 

 of the storms, but they almost always laid in the yard. They 

 never had a particle of water until they commenced to have 

 their lambs, about the middle 'of March, and then we carried 

 them water. Previous to that time, they ate the snow, like the 

 birds. Last winter, a friend of mine wanted to take a few sheep 

 to winter, and I sent him up thirty coarse-woolled lambs, and 

 thirty Merino lambs. They were kept on the same fare pre- 

 cisely, but last May, when I went up for them, the Merinos were 

 all dead but ten ; while only two of the coarse-wools had died. 

 I had to bring iiome the balance of the Merinos in my wagon, 

 and they seemed to be struck with death, and some of them did 

 die after they got home. A few only lived to linger out a mis- 

 erable existence. Tiiey look badly to-day ; while the others 

 have done remarkably well. 



