CARE OF THE EWE AND YOUNG LAMB. 105 



young lambs. English, lambs come from the 

 hurdles at the age of three or four months 

 weighing 80 to 100 lbs. They will do as well 

 in America, under right management, as the 

 writer has frequently demonstrated in his own 

 practice. The fact is that one must keep the 

 ewes in any case and must feed them, so that 

 there is a certain fixed expense connected with 

 rearing the lambs. This expense produces a cer- 

 tain amount of growth ; now by the addition of 

 supplementary foods this growth may be 

 greatly increased- at very slight expense. The 

 amount ,of extra food consumed by the young 

 lamb to make an extra pound of growth will 

 not cost more than one or two cents. To make 

 a pound of growth on him after he has left his 

 mother will cost from 3% to 5 cents. Then, 

 too, the early growth is what brings the largest 

 price. And again the lamb that matures ver^' 

 early and gets away to market escapes a hun- 

 dred ills that lie in wait for the lamb that re- 

 mains on the farm for nearly a year, so, alto- 

 gether, the arguments are all for pushing the 

 farm-bom lambs as rapidly as possible by 

 extra allowance of feed. 



Of course lambs that are pure-bred and in- 

 tended to stay on the farm to maturity must 

 be fed a different ration from those that are 

 merely to get fat quick and end a short but 

 hapTjy and victorious life at the market. Stock 

 lambs need abundant food but no forcing. 

 Their ration aside from their mothers' milk 

 should be of oats and bran, with a trifle of oil- 

 meal, clover and alfalfa hay, and in their 



