138 THE DOMESTIC SHEEP. 



to the quantity of food and the time of feeding. A sheep is a 

 restless animal, and it worries if the time of feeding is de- 

 layed only a short time. Then tine shepherd, thoughtless of this 

 habit of his flock, hears the impatient bleating, all pf which 

 means to him the loss of so much food on account of the loss 

 by nervous excitement and worry of the flock. As a rule we 

 are not sufficiently careful in this regard, and thus we do 

 not meet with so much success in this part of our farming 

 or herding as the English shepherds do. There the sheep is 

 considered the "rent-payer," that is, it pays the whole cost 

 of the use or interest on the value of the land. Here it 

 rarely amounts to half as much as this, for our lands are 

 much cheaper than those of England. 



As has been said, the sheep under the best methods of 

 management pays three profits: the fleece, the lamb and 

 the carcass. But on farms there is another source of income. 

 This we may find in returning to the figures given above, 

 where we find a large part of food not accounted for as 

 digestible nutriment. What becomes of this? It goes to 

 make manure which fertilizes the land, increasing the crops, 

 thus enabling the farmer to keep more sheep, and thus this 

 goes on increasing constantly. As more manure more crops, 

 more crops more sheep, and still more manure more crops, 

 more sheep, and constantly nure profit, through the enrich- 

 ment of the land. 



A well fed flock is the most profitable property a farmer 

 can own. It is said the dairy is this. But the sheep take 

 the palm from the cows every time. A cow, if only led for 

 milk, takes more fertility from the land in a year than ten 

 sheep, yet it is figured that seven sheep may be kept on one 

 acre in the best manner. Sheep are fed with profit in Eng- 

 land, the whole of Great Britain and Ireland may be in- 

 cluded in this name, a*nd equally in France and Germany, 

 on land worth, and paying interest or rent on, a value of five 

 hundred dollars an acre; and the reason for it is the skillful 

 methods of feeding, of which the growth of root crops is the 

 chief staple element. This we will say, with the strongest 

 emphasis, is the key to complete successful keeping of sheep 

 on farms. 



Sir J. B. Lawes the first agricultural experimenter in 

 the world in his most complete reports of his work during 



