154 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. 



vines. It is safer, however, to plant pump- 

 kins by themselves. 



Pumpkins serve the flock in two ways: first, 

 as a direct and healthful food of considerable 

 nutritive value and yet never dangerous from 

 excessive richness, and next from the direct 

 medicinal value of the seeds. Pumpkin seeds 

 are among the best vermifuges known. They 

 should never be removed from the pumpkins 

 but- fed all together, and if fed in considerable 

 amounts the direct and immediate improve- 

 ment in the flock will be very apparent. Tape- 

 worms have never troubled the writer's flock in 

 the least and no other reason can be attributed 

 than the annual liberal pumpkin feeding. 



The way to feed pumpkin^ is to strew them 

 about the pasture without cutting them open 

 at all, or at least cutting only a few of them. If 

 many are cut the sheep eat only the soft in- 

 side parts at first, with the seeds, and might 

 in this way get too many seeds for their good, 

 whereas when they must gnaw k way into the 

 pumpkin they will eat it up clean before at- 

 tacking another. The pumpkins keep better to 

 be scattered over the field than to be piled 

 in piles, at least before frost strikes them. 

 ■' The secret in growing pumpkins is, first, to 

 have the land rich, then to plant a great sur- 

 plus of seeds. The striped cucumber beetle 

 revels on pumpkin leaves, and if not enough 

 are planted for him and you also he will reap 

 the entire harvest at an early date. They may 

 be thinned after beginning to vine. 



It is particularly desirable to have the ewe 



