146 Agriculture 



utilisation of bullock-feeding yards for pork and bacon production and 

 partly through the change over to milk production. There has been a 

 steady decline in the number of older cattle fed for beef, especially in the 

 Isle. The majority of the animals is now marketed at or under two and a 

 half years of age and only a relatively small proportion at hghter weights 

 or when fully mature. 



The Sheep numbered, in 1913, some 108,000 in the County and 26,500 

 in the Isle. In 1919 the respective numbers were 74,500 and 14,000, and in 

 1937. 53j000 and 7500. These figures include a large number of lambs 

 nearly fat and take no account of those stores which are purchased, fattened 

 and sold during the winter season. Though there is httle doubt that now 

 more stores are purchased than formerly, the figures may be taken to 

 indicate a general decline during the post-war period. This is an experience 

 not uncommon to counties where formerly a high proportion of the sheep 

 was maintained on arable land, and it represents a change in practice that 

 may have some effect on the maintenance of fertihty of the lighter soils. 



On the chalk soils there are many parishes, which contained five or six 

 large breeding flocks of folded sheep ten or twenty years ago, but which 

 now can boast of only one or two flocks of much-reduced size. Important 

 factors underlying this change undoubtedly have been the relatively high 

 cost of labour and the desire, often the dictate of necessity, to grow a large 

 acreage of direct cash crops. The introduction of sugar beet, a cash crop 

 with a useful feeding residue in the form of tops, certainly has tended to 

 check the decline in the arable sheep numbers during winter, for though 

 ewe flocks may have been dispersed, it is not an uncommon practice to 

 fold off the tops with store sheep. 



The decline in the numbers of breeding sheep, however, cannot whoUy 

 be attributed to the reduction of the arable flocks. At least four factors 

 have tended to a reduction of grass sheep, viz. (a) the more widely held 

 opinion that, within certain hmits, the lighter the sheep stock the better 

 the health of the flock, [b) the increasmg need for an adequate drainage of 

 much of the heavier grassland, wliich must take precedence over its 

 improvement by manuring and stocking, {c) the reduction in the number 

 of grass orchards formerly grazed by sheep, [d) the replacement of sheep 

 by pigs in many of the orchards which remain in grass. 



Most of the arable flocks are of the Suffolk breed. In a number, kept 

 pure, the breeding of rams for sale is an important item of the gross 

 receipts from the flock; in others, the ewes are crossed with rams of another 

 Down breed, usually the Hampshire. The Half Bred predominates on the 

 grass farms. Generally the ewes of this breed are crossed with a Suffolk 

 for the production of fat or store lamb. Scattered flocks of Hampshires 



