1867. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



447 



DABK SIDE OF WOOL GROWING. 



A correspondent of the Prairie Farmer 

 says be was induced to engage in the wool- 

 growing business from "being taken" with the 

 way in which the beauties and profits thereof 

 Lave been presented by "Wool Grower" and 

 other writers upon the subject, during the past 

 six or eight years. But being "superlatively 

 disgusted with sheep and the sheep business," 

 he proceeds to detail his experiences and con- 

 victions in the following bill of particulars : — 



I did not buy sheep at as high figures as did 

 many other men at the same time, but 1 bought 

 better ones than many others did for the same 

 money. I believe I have fed and handled 

 them with proper care, but the thing don't 

 come o ;t as I was led to expect by "Wool- 

 Grower's" ciphering. He used to tell us that in 

 a tolerably good sized flock a man ought not 

 to lose over tive per cent., and in a large flock 

 not 'over ten percent., in a year. I started 

 with 1400, which, perhaps, might be called a 

 large Hock ; now I have never been able to 

 keep my losses anywhere near as low as ten 

 per cent. I wonder if "W. G." ever kept, on 

 paper, an account of every sheep which he lost 

 in a year ? 



As a fellow-sufferer and neighbor says, 

 "Sheep loill die in spite of thunder." During 

 the summer they do not go so very fast ; in 

 fact if you do not put each one down on paper 

 the very day the carcass is discovered, you 

 v/ill be inclined to think, in the fall, — O, I 

 have not lost many ; perhaps a half a dozen. 

 In the early part of winter and clear up to 

 March, you will feel as if you were getting 

 along swimmingly, but don't lay any flattering 

 unction to your soul until you reach the Ides 

 of March, the same Ides which Ctesar was to 

 beware of. About this time, perhaps, you 

 think it well enough to begin entering in your 

 book, dead sheep. Like an innocent, you 

 think, once April comes in and your Hock can 

 get a bite of grass, the mortality of sheep will 

 cease. The next two months undeceive you 

 terribly, and you feel as if sheep laid down 

 and died from sheer spite. 



When "lambing-time" — I believe that's the 

 word — arrives, you are expected by all good 

 authorities to raise 75 per cent. You are just 

 green enough to keep a book account here 

 again, so as to see whether you are doing what 

 is expected of you. For awhile you feel first- 

 rate ; your book reads, so many ewes have 

 lambed, so many lambs living ; in a week or 

 so you have to go back to your book and 

 chalk out some of those set down as living, on 

 account of the natural perversity of tlje whole 

 sheep kind, which will persist in dying without 

 any show of reason. Putting down, rubbing 

 out and altering, you run your now badly 

 speckled Ijook up to the time when all have 

 come and they are ready for "trimming." On 



finishing this job you proceed to count your 

 pile of tails; as the pile diminishes, how your 

 face lengthens ! "Only so many !" in a mourn- 

 ful tone of voice; then you consult your book; 

 book says so many ; then you recount your 

 pile of tails and continue glancing from book 

 to tails until your head swims. Worse than 

 all, you reflect, they cannot be considered 

 raised as yet, but two or three months must 

 elapse before weaning-time. At weaning-time 

 you take a fresh count, — have given up book 

 by this time — and sit down to figure your 

 year's increase. The number of increase has 

 to be expressed by the algebraical sio-n of 

 minus before it. '^ 



But I won't particularize any farther ; it is 

 sufficient to say that in my four years' experi- 

 ence, I have never found anything to come out 

 as I had been led to expect by enthusiastic 

 wool-growers. My losses have been greater ; 

 my percentage of lambs less ; my weight of 

 clip less ; the price obtained for mv wool less, 

 and I have been generally and particularly dis- 

 apppointed. I have discovered, among other 

 things, that no farm will carry as many sheep 

 as men tell (for I forget how many "Wool- 

 Grower" said a farm would carry) to the acre, 

 and I have also learned that a pasture ought 

 not to be stocked with half the number we 

 meet with in agricultural papers. Especially 

 is this true in dry seasons. Sheep bite so close 

 that when a drought comes, it uses up a pasture 

 I much worse than when the same pasture is 

 stocked with as many cattle as it ought to car- 

 ry. I have about come to the concfusion that 

 one sheep will eat, of grass, as much as two 

 steers. 



When it comes to marketing wool (and I am 

 glad I can agree with "Wool-Grower" on one 

 point) I have found a great drawback, not as 

 he says, "in the manner of marketing," but in 

 the market itself. I find that I am dependent 

 on the mere chance that one or two buyers 

 may come to my barn, or else on the honesty 

 of some commission merchant to whom I may 

 send it to sell for me. Even in the latter case, 

 there are times when, for two or three 

 months in succession, no buyer seeking wool 

 enters his lofts. How is it with other*crops ? 

 I can sell my wheat or my corn to a dozen 

 buyers, right at home, every daij in the ijear, 

 or I can send it to any large market, and sell 

 it to a thousand buyers, on every day in the 

 year. I can sell my cattle — either stock cattle 

 or fat cattle, and my hogs, twenty times, where 

 I can sell my wool crop, or a flock of sheep, 

 once. My cattle and my hogs are not turning 

 into "culls," every two or three years, as are 

 my sheep. 



Your sheep stock is as fragile as china-ware 

 and as perishable as strawberries. As to your 

 wool market you are not much better off than 

 those men who have bought high-priced Cash- 

 mere goats, the wool of which is said to be 

 worth from eight to sixteen dollars per pound 



