CHAPTER XXX. 



GENERAL CAEE OF SHEEP AND LAIIBS— FATTENING— 

 HOTHOUSE LAMBS. 



L Shepherd and Flock. 



The sheep is the plant-scavenger of the farm. Because of its dainty 

 manner of nibbling herbage we might suppose that its likes were few 

 and dislikes many, yet nearly every plant at some period of its growth 

 seems palatable and is freely eaten. No domestic or wild animal is 

 capable of subsisting on more kinds of food. Grasses, shrubs, roots, 

 the cereal grains, leaves, bark, and in times of scarcity fish and meat, 

 all furnish subsistence to this wonderfully adaptive animal. In the 

 great pine forests of Norway and Sweden^ they will exist thru a 

 hard winter by eating the pungent resinous evergreens. Among the 

 Laplanders, w^hen other foods fail, they eat dried fish, the half- 

 rotten flesh of the walrus, or even the very wool off each others' 

 backs. Low- reports that the sheep of the Shetland Islands feed 

 upon the salty seaweed during the winter months, knowing by in- 

 stinct the first ebbing of the tide, and that they are fed dried fish 

 when normal foods are scarce. 



McDonald^ writes of the Iceland sheep : ' ' The only kindness which 

 these animals receive from their keepers in the winter is being fed 

 on fish-bones and frozen offal, when their natural food is buried too 

 deep even for their ingenuity and patience." 



While sheep may subsist upon such articles, the organs of mastica- 

 tion and digestion plainly indicate that plants in some form con- 

 stitute their natural food. The cutting teeth in the lower jaw of the 

 sheep fit against the cartilaginous pad above in such manner that, 

 when feeding, the herbage is torn oft' rather than cut. The feces of 

 the sheep show the finest grinding of any of the farm animals, all 

 minute weed seeds being generally crushed and destroyed. If suffi- 

 cient numbers of sheep are confined to one field for a sufficient 

 time, every green thing is consumed, many species of plants being 

 entirely destroyed. When closely pastured upon brush land they 

 will derive much nourishment from the leaves, bark, and twigs. 



^ Sheep Husbandry, Killebrew, p. 6. ' Cattle, Sheep and Deer. 



" Domestic Animals of the British Islands. 



475 



