4G0 SHEEP INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES 



growers of New York aud the Eastern States, and tbe rise in bread- 

 stuffs, beef, pork, and dairy products, occasioned by the change in the 

 British tariff, and the famine which prevailed in Europe by reason of 

 the short crops of 1846, tended farther to depreciate sheep, by ofltering 

 inducements to embark in branches of husbandry furnishing the former 

 staples. Consequently sheep became cheaper than ever before, prime 

 grade sheep, bearing wool of good quality, selling for $1.25 per head, 

 and coarse common sheep for $1, lambs half a dollar, making in the 

 ordinary proportion between lambs and grown sheep about 75 cents 

 per head, taking a flock through. Advantage was taken of the low 

 price of high-grade sheep in Vermont and elsewhere, where they were 

 being sold off, and many thousands were purchased and taken to the 

 South, some peddlers selling well into the thousands, one dealer alone, 

 from 1847 to 1852 disposing of more than 13,000 in Virginia for wool- 

 growing purposes. In 1848 Samuel F. Christian, near Greenville, 

 Augusta County, had a flock of very superior Merinos. In 1850 Buck- 

 ingham County was growing fine wool; in Fairfax a considerable num- 

 ber of the flne-wooled sheep had been brought from Vermont and ISew 

 York, and in 1852 it was reported that Mr. Dox, of Nelson County, 

 sent 2,500 pounds of Saxony wool to New York, the produce of 900 

 sheep which had been driven to Virginia from New York. But flne- 

 wooled sheep did not get into high favor, long-wooled being preferred. 



At the fair of the Virginia State Agricultural Society in 1854 a pre- 

 mium was awarded to Theodore M. Davidson, Fauquier County, for a 4- 

 year Spanish Merino buck, and one to Samuel F. Christian, of Augusta, 

 for a 2-year-old Spanish Merino, and also for the best pen of Merino 

 ewes. These were all the Merinos shown east of the Alleghany, but 

 Dr. W. L. Wight and J. & W. Brady, of West Virginia, carried off 

 some prizes for Spanish and French Merino sheep. Though many full- 

 blooded Spanish Merino and high grades were brought into the State 

 from 1847 to 1852, the fine wool-growing industry languished and the 

 flocks were neglected or became a prey to the dogs. A few farmers 

 cared for aud sought to raise them in the Piedmont region, among whom 

 was S. S. Bradford, of Culpeper, who, in 1856, had a flock of Spanish 

 and SUesian Merinos from the flocks of George Campbell, of Vermont, 

 and William Chamberlain, of New York. Mr. Bradford rarely had less 

 than 1,000 fine-wools in a flock, and had a German shepherd to care for 

 them. In good weather they were hurdled at night on the poorer 

 spots of the field in which they grazed during the day. In rainy or 

 intensely cold weather they were housed day and night. They were 

 fed daily about 1 bushel of oats to the hundred head. In the grazing 

 season they required no other food than the herbage. 



A neighbor of Mr. Bradford, with 125 fine-wools, though never hous- 

 ing them even in sleety weather, and having no shepherd, got heavier 

 fleeces from them, and lost proportionately less than Mr. Bradford by 

 disease and causalties. The original cost of this flock was $2.50 per 



