128 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



should be kept separate for a few days from tlie remainder of 

 the flock, and the ewe should hare good food. 



At two or three weeks, tlie lambs that are to go early to the 

 butcher will begin to eat meal, and gradually increasing will 

 at the end of four months eat nearly a quart a day. For such 

 lambs it is common to have a separate pen under the shed, with 

 a constant supply of meal for them, which they get at through 

 an opening too small to admit the other sheep. Castration and 

 docking are necessary operations, usually performed when the 

 lambs are about a fortnight old, though some very skilful 

 flockmasters prefer to wait two or three weeks longer. Docking 

 is necessary as a matter of comfort and convenience to the sheep. 

 At the time of performing these operations the lambs should 

 be kept close in the yard ; if turned out and allowed to play 

 they will be likely to bleed. 



Some care should be exercised upon the ewes at weaning, 

 especially those from which the lambs are taken early, lest 

 garget or inflammation of the udder should take place ; they 

 should be put on the poorest pasture or lightest feed for a few 

 days, to check as much as possible the flow of milk. Some 

 farmers are in the habit of driving off" the lambs at once to 

 a distance, and of occasionally milking those ewes which seem 

 to suffer. Another way which we have tried successfully is to 

 shut up the ewes in the barn, giving them simply hay, turn- 

 ing the lambs into good feed ; after twelve hours we let in the 

 lambs for a short time to suck ; then separate them for twenty- 

 four hours ; and then allow them to suck for the last time ; 

 they arc then separated beyond hearing, and both lambs and 

 ewes do well. This part of a flockmaster's duty should secure 

 much more attention than is common. The large, mutton- 

 producing, twin-bearing sheep of England, have much more 

 milk, and are more liable to suffer than the Alerinos from 

 neglect of the udder. 



Our attention has been called in some of the returns to the 

 thoughtless and cruel manner of catching sheep by the wool ; 

 the skin of the sheep starts readily, and if a sheep caught in that 

 way, springing violently to escape, should be killed within 

 a few hours, spots of clotted blood beneath the skin, would 

 show where he was caught, and how strong his efforts to 

 break away. They should be caught by the hind leg and neck ; 



