354 SfiEEP husbanDrv. 



essential to dairying that do not exist in all parts, so all can not be 

 dairymen. 



To those farmers who can not be dairymen, winter sheep-feeding 

 affords a profitable solution to the problem. It even has advantages over 

 dairying, in that the farmer need not have the stock upon L'is farm more 

 than from four to six months in a year. He may crowd his farm for all 

 it is worth during summer in growing the needed food, and when winter 

 sets in fill his barn with sheep and turn this food into the three "M's," 

 mutton, money and manure, and do this with a good profit. Of course, 

 there may be an occasional year when the feeder will but little more 

 than "get out whole" after paying for all the food eaten, but there will 

 be other years when he will double his money. So long as one is not a 

 "fortune teller," who can foretell futurity, it will be dangerous bobbing 

 in and out. One may "miss as well as hit," but he who will go into the 

 business to ' 'stick' ' will find it an average safe business and at the end 

 of five years will find an average satisfactory profit. 



In addition, the farm will rapidly grow richer. There is a further 

 reason. One can hire men by the year for almost the same money as 

 for eight months, so that really about all the winter labor will cost will 

 be the board of the men, and more than this, by so hiri*ng we can keep 

 our best men and select the best ones that have worked during the sum- 

 mer for our neighbors, and any man who is kept by the year will be 

 more efiicient and valuable than would the same man only hired for the 

 summer months. He comes to feel an interest in the farm and business, 

 and such men are much more desirable. 



Kind of Sheep to Winter. But not all sheep can be fed with 

 equal certainty of success. If a fold of mature sheep be put in, no mat- 

 ter how judiciously fed, nothing can be added to them but fat. The 

 fact is well established, that while an animal is young and growing the 

 character of the food will determine whether the gain be lean meat or 

 fat, but once the same animal becomes full grown and mature, feed what 

 you may, the weight added will be fat and fat only. The size of muscle 

 may be increased, but it will be by the crowding of particles of fat be- 

 tween the tissues. 



Another fact must not be lost. Young animals eat, digest and assim- 

 ilate more food in proportion to live weight than older ones, and our 

 profit will depend upon the gain, and the gain comes from food eaten 

 above what is needed to maintain the animal. The kind of sheep to be 

 fed most profitably must be young and thrifty, and should be of some 



