316 OHIO EXPERIMENT STATION: BULLETIN 294 



that shorn April 12. The increase in proportion of foreign matter 

 in wool in the spring months is usually attributed by sheep raisers 

 to an increased amount of oil, but since warm weather increases 

 perspiration, it is reasonable to suppose that at least a part of this 

 matter is composed of deposits of mineral salts, the residue from 

 the evaporation of the perspiration. 



While many sheep raisers do not like to shear in the spring until 

 the weather becomes sufficiently warm to produce, as they think, 

 the maximum amount of oil in the wool, there are others who have 

 reasons for favoring early shearing. There is a more or less com- 

 mon belief that when sheep are shorn rather early in the spring- 

 say late in March or early in April, while there yet remain a few 

 weeks of cool weather the wool grows more rapidly than it does if 

 shearing is delayed until hot weather, and that if the sheep are 

 properly housed they suffer no hardships from early shearing. 

 There is also a belief that when sheep are shorn after the coming of 

 the hot weather of late May and early June and are turned out to 

 pasture, the hot sun "scalds" the skin of the newly shorn sheep, 

 particularly if shorn close, and retards the growth of the wool the 

 following year. Table I furnishes evidence to indicate that the time 

 of year when the sheep are shorn has some influence upon the 

 amount of wool produced. Since it is apparent from the data 

 presented on page 319 that there is a difference in the proportion 

 of materials other than wool fiber in wool shorn at different 

 times during the spring, the scoured wool rather than the grease 

 wool must be taken as a measure of the influence of the time of 

 shearing upon the amount of wool fiber produced. It may be seen 

 from Table I that, regardless of whether the sheep were washed, 

 those shorn April 12 produced slightly more scoured wool than did 

 those shorn June 1. While this difference of a fraction of a pound 

 of scoured wool per head seems slight, yet when scoured Delaine 

 wool is worth from 60 to 80 cents per pound, or even more, it may 

 be seen that this difference is of no small financial consequence in a 

 large flock. This point, however, will have but little practical bear- 

 ing until there is evolved a system of buying wool which will take 

 the amount of shrink into consideration more than does the present 

 system and make it possible for growers to receive prices that are 

 more nearly in keeping with the real value of their wool. 



INFLUENCE OF TIME OF SHEARING ON RATE OF GAIN 



It is commonly admitted, even by those who practice late shear- 

 ing because of the supposedly greater weight of grease wool secured, 



