198 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. 



Except on farms in the East there is no 

 other part of the United States where much 

 increase in numbers of sheep kept can be 

 made. Here double the numbers now kept, 

 may be and some day doubtless will be kept 

 when the cattle men turn sheep breeders. 



MANAGEMENT OF THE BANGE KAMS. 



The "buck herd" is a necessary institution 

 upon the range, and often a troublesome prop- 

 osition it is. There are usually kept about 30 

 rams to the thousand ewes, though some grow- 

 ers use a larger number. Various methods are 

 adopted to keep these rams between breeding 

 seasons. They are sometimes pastured in a 

 fenced pasture and corralled at night to keep 

 them from coyotes. Sometimes they are 

 herded where there are enough of them on a 

 ranch to make a herd and he must indeed be 

 an active and careful herder who will lose 

 none of them, since as fall days come on their 

 instinct leads them to roam in search of fe- 

 males. 



Often several ranchers will combine their 

 forces and put all the rams together in one 

 herd. And others will allow them to run with 

 the ewes during winter and spring, separating 

 them in summer when there might be danger 

 of too early matings. 



Sometimes it is possible to put the rams in 

 a wether herd, though wether bands are not 

 nearly so common as they once were and many 

 ranchers keep none at all, selling off all 



