﻿THE MANAGEMENT OF SHEEP ON THE FARM. 29 



pigment. The Department of Agriculture has had excellent results 

 with all of these. Breeders sometimes tattoo their initials in the 

 ears of all their sheep so as to eliminate any question of breeding. 



Branding. — Branding is a common way of marking sheep in the 

 West. It is done with branding paint upon the wool or with a hot 

 iron upon the nose. Branding with paint upon the wool is the mosl 

 common method. The paint brands are stamped upon a prominent 

 place so that they can be readily seen; either on top of the shoulders, 

 on the back, or on the rump. Quite often lots of sheep that are to 

 be kept separate are branded some number in order that they can be 

 readily identified if they become mixed. Different-colored branding 

 paints are used, the more common being red and black. The brands 

 are made of either wood or a small iron rod about three-eighths of an 

 inch in diameter. Branding paints can be purchased upon the market 

 ready for use, or they can be prepared upon the farm. 



The disadvantage of branding lies in the difficulty of securing a 

 paint that will remain legible throughout the season and yet scour 

 off readily in the scouring processes of the wool. When the brands 

 must be clipped off by hand the resulting loss of wool and labor is 

 considerable. Branding with a hot iron is sometimes used in the 

 range country because it makes a permanent mark, but this method 

 is rarely, if ever, practiced upon the farm. Burning a brand upon the 

 horns is used to some extent, but this method has been used more in 

 foreign countries than in America. 



CASTRATION. 



It is surprising how many native lambs come to market without 

 having been castrated. The operation is an extremely simple one, 

 and the financial losses that result from failure to perform it are con- 

 siderable. A ram lamb develops sexual characteristics at about three 

 months of age. They then become restless, worry the rest of the flock, 

 and fight among themselves and cause a generally unsatisfactory 

 condition. They cease to make satisfactory gains themselves, and 

 prevent the other members of the flock from doing so. The following 

 experiment 1 was conducted to determine the difference in gain between 

 ram and wether lambs. Two uniform lots, so far as breeding and age 

 were concerned, of 12 each, were selected, one lot being castrated, 

 the other left entire. Both received the same feed and treatment, 

 yet at the end of the feeding period the rams weighed 900 pounds 

 and the wethers 1,020 pounds. 



In another instance 2 statistics secured from several years' obser- 

 vation upon a flock showed that wether lambs gained in 60 days on 



1 Abstract Experiment Station Record. 



2 Proceedings of the Society for the Promotion of Agricultural Science, pp. 363-165, 1901. 



