Types and Market Classes of Live Stock 271 



cultivated farming sections where there is considerable pasture together 

 with grain and roughage for fattening purposes and for wintering 

 breeding flocks. Mutton and wool production necessitates less grain 

 feeding than beef production, though grain often may be used to ad- 

 vantage, and in some cases grain must be used in order to finish late 

 lambs and those not well nourished by their dams. Many such lambs 

 are brought from the West for fattening in the central states. Sheep 

 differ from cattle in that they are better suited to arid lands and are 

 less suited to wet lands than are cattle. Sheep are best adapted of all 

 domestic animals to very rough lands. Sheep are especially suited 

 with the shorter, sweeter grass of higher altitudes, whereas cattle can 

 best utilize lowland pastures of coarser and ranker growth. That sheep 

 have an important place on high-priced land and in intensive farming 

 is shown by numerous instances in this country, and also by the large 

 numbers of sheep profitably kept under such conditions in Great 

 Britain. Whether on western ranges or on higher-priced lands in the 

 Central West, East, and South, the combined wool-and-mutton type 

 of sheep, yielding annually a good crop of lambs and a good crop of 

 wool, is most profitable. The western sheep owner places more em- 

 phasis on the wool, and the sheep owner east of the Missouri river 

 favors the type in which meat production is more marked than wool 

 production, though in both East and West, neither wool nor mutton 

 may be ignored. 



Only purebred sires should be used on any flock, and the same 

 breed should be patronized each time a ram is purchased; in other 

 words, breeding for the market should not result in a mixture of breeds, 

 but the owner should breed in line, grading up his flock by consecutive 

 crosses of the same breed. Thus will the good features of that breed 

 be so strongly stamped upon the flock as to give it a high average of 

 individual merit and great uniformity. ^ 



The number of registered purebred sheep in the United States on 

 January 1, 1920, as reported by the census, was 463,504, or 1.3 per cent 

 of all the sheep in the country. ^ 



Source of improvement. — A certain few men have collected the 

 very choicest purebred and registered sheep that may be had, almost 

 regardless of price, and have established purebred flocks of the highest 

 excellence. The owner of such a flock makes it his business to supply 

 breeding rams and some breeding ewes to breeders of purebred sheep 



^For definitions of purebred and grade, and for discussions of the importance 

 of good ancestry, the utility value of purebred live stock, and the grading process, 

 see Chapter IX. 



2The ten leading states in numbers of registered purebred sheep were Idaho 

 47,107, Ohio 39,444, Oregon 38,738, Utah 30,013, California 28,831, Montana 24,208, 

 Michigan 21,342, Iowa 19,522, New York 18,338, and Texas 17,119. 



