Ewe Management. 41 



and immediately after lambing tlie food may be made as 

 substantial and milk-producing as possible. A good 

 warm paddock on a pastoral place, and, where roots and 

 fodders are fed, by the supply of such of them as local 

 conditions will permit. Hay, oat chaff, with turnips or 

 mangolds, can all be profitable produced, and fed to 

 sheep, trebly profitable when supplied to save the con- 

 dition of the ewes and their lambs. Hay, in conjunction 

 with roots, is a good food ; the hay neutralises the 

 wateriness of the roots, and the roots are 

 a corrective of the costiveness caused by hay alone. 

 If the ewe has been well done by all along 

 she will possibly bear twin lambs, and these 

 will make a heavy call upon her reserves, which, 

 founded upon fair treatment, the best of food will but 

 sustain. The difference in the profits of a well-treated ewe 

 and one that has to run the gauntlet of a skimpy diet, 

 cannot be told in figures. It denotes largely the basis 

 upon which successful or unsuccessful sheep farming 

 rests. On the one hand, a well-treated ewe will, besides 

 cutting a weighty fleece, rear, may be, two fine healthy 

 lambs. On the other hand, the ewe may, if bad treat- 

 ment does not cause its premature demise, cut but 3/- 

 worth of hungry wool, and possibly introduce to a 

 miserable life only one luckily for the ewe, the lamb, 

 and the farmer unsatisfactory and flock-degenerating 

 lamb, difficult and costly to fatten. In the former case 

 the ewe may return over 20/- a year; in the latter 10/- 

 or less. 



Sheep invariably do well on carefully-stocked pasture 

 up to and past the shortest winter's^ day, after which, 

 until the spring growth sets in, likely difficulties have to 

 be provided for. On a purely pasture farm this will 

 have been considered in the stocking, and where fodder 

 and roots are supplied, sufficient will have to be provided 

 for the requirements of the flock. The months of Sep- 

 tember and October are sometimes very hard on stock, 



