2 Aspects of a Sheep Farm. 



breeding, and with the assistance of time, some breeds 

 have been established to accustom themselves and to 

 thrive on flat lands, but the drainage must be good or 

 they will not do well. The health of a hill flock does 

 not require the attention that one on the flats would. 

 The hills provide better drainage, sweeter .grasses, and 

 exercise towards the maintenance of health, for the 

 sheep is an animal that is restless and foots it a lot. 

 Damp and undrained land, with its growth of reeds, 

 flax, rough grasses, is more adapted to cattle, and unless 

 it forms but a small part of the property, and fenced-off 

 at that for preference, sheep are better absent from it. 

 The conditions all round for sheep-farming in New 

 Zealand are so favourable that there are not a great 

 many properties that are not adapted for the grazing of 

 sheep, mainly, or in conjunction with other stock, or at 

 certain times of the year. 



A good proportion of the shorter grasses would be 

 in evidence upon a typical sheep farm. Such grasses do 

 well on limestone and sandstone soils, and on hills. 

 There are hard or Chewing's fescue, sheeps' fescue and 

 crested dogstail, and two or three of these may be ob- 

 served in proportionate accompaniment of such grasses 

 as cocksfoot and white clover, and if the soil is not too 

 hard or dry, with some meadow foxtail and timothy. 

 The two latter are good sheep grasses, but they grow 

 best on soils that are not typical sheep ones, i.e., soils 

 of a retentive nature and more adapted to cattle and 

 cereal growing. They do not thrive on dry hills. Ken- 

 tucky blue grass is a fine sheep grass for New Zealand 

 hill lands that are not to be ploughed, for it is of a 

 twitchy habit; and wherever the native danthonia grass 

 thrives it at once suggests suitability for sheep in prefer- 

 ence to other stock. 



New Zealand can claim to having the finest climate 

 in the world for sheep farming, being neither too hot, 

 too cold, too wet, or too dry. The annual rainfall over 



