PASTURES AND GRAZING THEM BY SHEEP 1 79 



sheep, and in rare instances brood sows in heat may hurt 

 the lambs. (4) When sheep graze with colts, the latter 

 are much prone, through mere play, to chase the former, 

 to their injury. The chief of the reasons in favor of such 

 grazing are: (i) The grazing that follows is more com- 

 plete, since one class of the stock eats more or less what 

 another class rejects. (2) Sheep grazing in a pasture 

 are a great aid in preventing increase in weeds in the 

 same. (3) It is frequently much more convenient to graze 

 stock together than separate. The following deductions 

 from the above would seem legitimate: (i) Such grazing 

 is admissible and may be commendable when the range 

 is large and the food is plentiful ; but (2) it should not be 

 much practiced when the range is small, and not to any 

 extent when the supplies of the food are short. 



Protecting sheep from substances that adhere to the 

 wool is a matter of much importance. While these sub- 

 stances, usually designated burs, are of various kinds, as 

 burdocks, cockleburs and sandburs, burdocks are most 

 frequently in evidence. They entrench themselves in by- 

 places in the pastures, and unless combated by man will 

 continue to produce fresh plants from year to year. This 

 cosmopolitan weed apparently grows in all parts of the 

 United States and Canada, and yet its complete eradica- 

 tion in a pasture or elsewhere is very simple. Cutting a 

 plant below the crown at any time after it has begun to 

 grow and by any kind of an implement will cause its 

 death. Mowing above ground, even after the seedheads 

 have begun to form, will not stay reproduction, as im- 

 mediately short seed stalks at once spring up, and will, 

 if unmolested, mature seeds within a few weeks. The 

 cocklebur is the great occupant of fields sown to grain or 

 planted to corn. The aim should be to keep sheep from 

 such grazing when the fleeces become a mat, as it were, 

 of burs. It not only disfigures the form of the sheep be- 

 yond expression, but greatly discounts the value of the 

 fleece. When plants that injure the character of the wool, 



