88 DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



substitute. But my impression is decided that free access to 

 water is advantageous to sheep, particularly to those having 

 lambs ; and I should consider it a matter of importance, on a 

 sheep farm, to arrange the pastures, if practicable, so as to 

 bring water into each of them." 



6. Shade. u No one who has observed with what eagerness 

 sheep seek shade in hot weather, and how they pant and 

 apparently suffer when a hot sun is pouring down on their 

 nearly naked bodies, will doubt that, both as a matter of hu- 

 manity and utility, they should be provided, during the hot 

 summer months, with a better shelter than that afforded by a 

 common rail fence. Forest trees are the most natural and best 

 shades, and it is as contrary to utility as it is to good taste to 

 strip them entirely from the sheep-walks. A strip of stone 

 wall or close board fence on the south and west sides of the 

 pasture will form a passable substitute for trees ; but in the 

 absence of all these, and of buildings of any kind, a shade can 

 be cheaply constructed of poles and brush, in the same manner 

 as the sheds of the same materials for winter shelter already 

 described." 



7. Lambs. " Lambs are usually dropped in the North from 

 the first to the fifteenth of May. In the South, they might 

 safely come earlier. It is not expedient to have them dropped 

 when the weather is cold and boisterous, as they require too 

 much care ; but the sooner the better after the weather has 

 become mild, and the herbage has started sufficiently to give, 

 the ewes that green food which is required to produce a plenti- 

 ful secretion of milk. It is customary in the North to have 

 fields of clover, or the earliest of grasses, reserved for the early 

 spring feed of the breeding ewes ; and if these can be contigu- 

 ous to their shelters, it is a great convenience for the ewes 

 should be confined in the latter, on cold and stormy nights, 

 during the lambing season. 



" If warm and pleasant, and the nights are warmish, I prefer 

 to have the lambing take place in the pastures. I think sheep 

 are more disposed to own and take kindly to their lambs thus, 



