16 BULLETIN 313, TJ. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



rams sold in the 1914 Sydney sale at an average of $42 per head. 

 During the same week one commission firm sold sheep of various 

 breeds at the following average prices per head : 50 Shropshire flock 

 rams at $8; 694 Lincoln stud and flock rams and ewes at $20; 551 

 Border Leicesters (mainly flock rams) at $28; and 450 Eomney 

 Marsh stud and flock rams and ewes at $25. 



SHEEP BREEDERS' RECORDS. 



While American and Australian sheep breeders seem earlier to 

 have been in agreement as to the points of wool-producing sheep, in 

 the last quarter of a century their ideas have diverged. In contrast 

 to the requirements of registration and the multiplicity of flock books 

 in the United States the great Australian Merino sheep-breeding busi- 

 ness still progresses with only private records. These private records 

 are in some cases fairly complete but very seldom permit the full 

 tabulation of a pedigree for three generations. In selling rams at 

 from $2,000 to $5,000, which is commonly done, the descent or im- 

 mediate parentage is a consideration, but is vouched for only by the 

 breeder, which is really the only guaranty received by the purchaser 

 of any animal having its pedigree entered in an association's registry. 



SHOW SHEEP. 



Show-ring results apparently carry little weight with Australasian 

 sheep breeders. Their regard for a line of breeding or for any par- 

 ticular flock is based upon the sale of wool shorn from the offspring 

 of representatives of such strains or flocks. Australian show man- 

 agers seem to have succeeded somewhat better than those in America 

 in having fine- wool sheep exhibited fairly. Evidences and claims of 

 early or stubble shearing are not missing, however, and stud breeders 

 whose flocks are well established prefer to offer their stock for sale 

 without showing. In the Sydney annual show and sales sheep not 

 exhibited usually sell higher than the prize winners. 



Having once secured satisfactory results by using rams from a 

 particular stud flock the commercial sheep raiser is assured that 

 other rams from the same stud will possess and transmit the same 

 general qualities. This is especially true in Australia because the 

 older stud flocks make but limited, if any, use of sires bred on other 

 stations. The American breeder's insistence upon an outcross in each 

 generation finds its opposite in the Australian's preference for stud 

 sires of his own breeding. Of course the size of the flocks renders it 

 possible to avoid very close matings. In some cases carefully bred 

 stud flocks have retained their vigor for over 20 years with practi- 

 cally no outside blood. 



