446 



SHEEP INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES 



sheep were brougM from the West, crossed with the improved mutton 

 breeds, and the lambs sent to market, soon to be followed by the fat- 

 tened ewes and wethers. Eaising lambs for market and fattening mut- 

 ton has been the principal business of the Delaware sheep husbandman 

 since 1860, and in which he has been reasonably successful. 



In a paper read before a convention of agriculturists, at Washington, 

 D. 0., January 27, 1883, Prof. Wesley Webb, of Delaware College, stated 

 that in 1878 Delaware had 35,000 sheep, which yielded 3 -f-^' pounds of 

 wool per head, or 136,500 pounds. This wool sold for 28 cents per pound, 

 amounting to $38,129. These 35,000 sheep raised 26,250 lambs, worth 

 probably $3.50 each, or $91,875. Thus the annual income was in round 

 numbers $130,000. Here, as everywhere else, we find a wide range of 

 practice in management, and a broad difference in the income of differ- 

 ent flocks. If aU flocks were bred up to a good standard and properly 

 fed they might yield 210,000 pounds of wool, or 6 pounds per head, and 

 raise 31,500 lambs worth $6 per head, making an annual income of 

 $247,800 — an increase of $117,800 or 90 per cent. The natural conditions 

 are favorable to this great improvement in Delaware sheep husbandry. 

 A climate exempt from the rigors of northern winters and the excessive 

 heats of southern summers, with a fertile soil, rolling and well drained 

 surface, good water and salubrious atmosphere could keep successfully 

 the best and most productive breeds of sheep, and being near large cities 

 and busy woolen mills exceptional facilities are possessed for marketing 

 the produce of the flocks. With all these favoring circumstances Dela- 

 ware does not need to keep a small, unproductive, unthrifty variety of 

 sheep. Her low fertile lands are capable of carrying the largest and 

 best mutton breeds. But on much of the land of the State such large 

 long-wooled sheep as the Leicesters and Ootswolds need some extra 

 feed. So that for the majority of farms the Oxfordshire, the Hampshire 

 and the Shropshire Downs are better adapted. Either breed thrives 

 and yields the required amount of wool. There is much land in Dela- 

 ware capable of improvement and which the sheep only can improve, 

 but the animal is not utihzed for that purpose. Like all the older States 

 of the Union, Delaware is losing in the number of her sheep, though not 

 as rapidly as some. The number of sheep and pounds of wool from 

 1840 to 1890 are here given : 



