SHEEP 167 



along the skin from head to tail, another portion of the wool was then 

 divided and the process repeated till the whole sheep was done. A 

 good man would smear 10 to 12 sheep in a day, and he was paid at 

 the rate of 2d. per sheep. 



For a few years, between the salving and dipping period, the 

 salve mixture was made fluid, and poured on the skin from a kind 

 of large oil can with a long spout. The sheddings were made 

 much wider than for salving, but many more sheep could be done 

 in a day, though it needed two people. This plan is still thought 

 by many farmers better than either salving or dipping. 



Bigg's sheep and lamb dipping composition was first used in 

 Westmorland in or about 1840 at Windermere and Ambleside, and 

 in 1841 the first advertisement appeared in the Westmorland Gazette 

 of a dipping composition, an apparatus for dipping being supplied. 

 Irving, of Shap Abbey, first started dipping in 1850, he preferred 

 it to salving, he used Bigg's preparation for aged sheep and 

 " McDougail's for Hogs." In 1868 the cost of dipping was ijd. per 

 head as against salving at 8d. ; the dipped wool making i|d. to 2d. 

 per lb. more in the market than salved. From the middle of the 

 century onward dipping rapidly displaced salving — ^but the latter 

 was pertinaciously held to in the Fell and Herdwick flocks, and it 

 was only finally given up on the issue of a compulsory dipping order 

 by the Board of Agriculture, issued for the eradication of scab, in 1905. 

 A prosecution for salving instead of dipping took place at Shap in 1906, 

 the farmer being fined for not complying with the Order of the Board. 



In all the fell flocks of sheep the ram lambs, if not castrated within 

 a fortnight of their birth, are operated on about midsummer, at which 

 period the sheep were washed, the sheep being clipped about a 

 fortnight later, and afterwards impressed with their owners mark 

 as directed by Tusser : — 



" A sheepe-marke, a tarre-kettle, bttle or ruitch, 

 Two pottles of tarre, to a pottle of pitch." 



though when the " Wadd " (black lead) was first discovered in Borrow- 

 dale " the people used it to mark their sheep," and it continued to be 

 used for that purpose till about the third decade of the past century. 

 The "washings" which used to be as great a day almost as the 



