204 MANAGEMENT AND FEEDING OP SHEEF 



purchasing, such as must be incurred when the lambs are 

 brought in from an outside source. Where the facilities 

 for fattening are present, it is very evident that if i^ pays 

 a purchaser to buy the lambs and take them to another 

 farm to fatten them, it should pay the grower better to 

 fatten them at home. 



When the market is near, selling lambs to be fat- 

 tened on other farms finds little justification. It may be 

 different when the lambs must be shipped. It may prove 

 unduly expensive to ship them in any other way than in 

 carload lots. To accomplish this it may be necessary to 

 add to the lambs grown, by purchase, or to sell them to 

 another. This difficulty could, of course, be met by 

 shipping finished lots in a co-operative way. Of course, 

 it is better to sell lambs in the finished than in the un- 

 finished form ; hence the farmer who purchases lambs 

 from other farmers and fattens them may be doing a good 

 work. Nevertheless it is better in every way, when it can 

 be done, to fatten the lambs on farms on which they are 

 grown. Of course, there are farms on which this cannot 

 be done, as, for instance, where so large a proportion of 

 the farm is too rugged to grow food other than pasture. 

 If fattened at all, the lambs growing on these farms must 

 be fattened elsewhere. 



The most important source by far at the present time 

 from which sheep and lambs can be obtained in the 

 United States are the ranges of the West. Those grown 

 on the open range cannot be finished there. If fattened, 

 it must be in the mountain valleys where food is grown 

 with the aid of irrigation, or on arable farms that lie east- 

 ward from the ranges. The number fattened in the moun- 

 tain valleys as yet is relatively small, nor is it probable 

 that those valleys will be able in the future to furnish 

 food enough to fatten all the lambs grown on the ranges 

 adjacent to them. The surplus must needs be fattened on 

 the arable farm. 



For such fattening they may be obtained by purchase 



