24 MANAGEMENT AND FEEDING OF SHEEP 



them in large flocks where much grazing may be required 

 than in the case of other breeds. 



Sheep should never be confined exclusively to brush 

 pastures. The leaves of trees and shrubs are not the 

 natural diet of sheep, although they may live on the same 

 for a considerable time. While goats will fatten on such 

 food, if sheep are confined to brush pastures exclusively 

 or even mainly, but one result can follow, which is that 

 the flock will become the wreck of its former self. Great 

 loss has sometimes followed the attempts to keep sheep 

 thus by investors who did not know that sheep would 

 not thrive on brush. 



Nevertheless, under certain conditions, they may be 

 used with much advantage in destroying brush, provid- 

 ing they are suitably managed when thus used. They 

 should be provided with a grass pasture on which they 

 may graze during a portion of each day. The brush will 

 be more quickly destroyed if the sheep can be taken from 

 the corral to the brush pasture in the morning when they 

 are hungry, or if they can be turned into it the previous 

 evening. They will then browse freely on the brush, but 

 in the afternoon they should have the run of a grass 

 pasture well stocked with grass. When the grass and 

 the brush are in the same pasture, the brush will eventu- 

 ally be killed, but not in one season where the brush pre- 

 ponderates. 



Grain grazed by sheep In some instances grain 

 crops may be grazed by sheep during the early stages of 

 growth with benefit to the crop, in addition to the graz- 

 ing furnished. In other instances such grazing, even of 

 the same crops and on the same soils, may prove detri- 

 mental to the yields obtained from them. In some in- 

 stances the increase from such grazing may be more than 

 50 per cent, and in other instances the decrease may be 

 equally large. The marked difference in the results may 

 be the outcome of a difference in the character of the 

 seasons in conjunction with prudent or imprudent grazing. 



