THE PRODUCTION OF " HOTHOUSE " LAM us 



239 



K 



shipped by express in order to insure prompt delivery and to get them 

 promptly on the market early in the week. 



PART II 



RECORD OF THE PRODUCT 



In Part I the methods of handling the hothouse-lamb flock at the Cor- 

 nell University farm have been outlined. In Part II it is aimed to show 

 that these methods have produced 

 good results. The time of market- 

 ing to obtain the highest prices 

 may be first discussed. 



Time to market 



The average of eight seasons' 

 quotations shows that the time to 

 market hothouse lambs is before 

 March 4 (Table i and Plate I). 

 On the average the price begins a 

 steady decline about March 4 and 

 does not again recover. Before 

 March 4 the price varies some- 

 what on the average, and still 

 more in individual seasons. This 

 means that in order to top the 

 market the lambs must be born 

 before January i. The top price 

 for the eight years was $12.50, 

 quoted in the third and fourth 

 weeks of January, 1909. The 

 average up to March 4 for all the 

 eight seasons has not varied widely 

 from $io per carcass (Table i). 

 f So far as the product of the 

 Cornell flock is concerned, out of 

 a total of 261 lambs raised as 

 winter lambs in eight years, 60, 

 or 23 per cent, have been sold 

 before March 4 a creditable 

 percentage when the difficulty of 

 getting the ewes to breed in the early summer is taken into account (Table 2). 

 This leads us to the data on the number of lambs that have beeh sold 

 on the hothouse-lamb market out of the total number of lambs born. 



FIG. 44. The caul properly spread over the 

 carcass 



