CASTEATION. 161 



vagina. The breeders of English sheep usually leave it three 

 or four inches long. 



Docking is best performed in cool, dry weather, and the 

 lambs should not be previously heated by chasing or even 

 driving them fast. The flock should be driven into a stable, 

 the lambs caught out, one by one, and as they are docked 

 placed in another apartment. The tails of the rams should be 

 thrown into one pile and those of the ewes into another, so 

 that when the docking is done, a count of each pile will give 

 the number of each sex ; and this should then and there be 

 recorded in the " Sheep Book" of the farm. It is well, also, 

 to mark those of one sex with a brand, or a dot made by the 

 end of a cob dipped in paint, to facilitate later separations. 

 Sometimes, though very rarely, a lamb bleeds to death from 

 docking. This generally can be stopped by a tightly drawn 

 ligature. If this fails, resort should at once be had to actual 

 cautery — ^the red - hot iron. If lambs are docked after the 

 weather becomes quite hot, it is advisable to apply a mixture of 

 tar, butter and turpentine to the parts. I this year saw eighty 

 lambs, docked on the 7th of July, with their tails swollen and 

 covered with small maggots, for the want of some such 

 application to keep away the fly. The scrotums of the 

 castrated ones were also filled with maggots. Docking is 

 necessary to guard against filthiness. Maggots, too, are 

 liable to be produced under that filth, and to cause the 

 death of the animal. And, finally, habit has rendered a long 

 tail an unsightly appendage to the sheep. 



Castration — Is usually performed at the same time with 

 docking — but it is rather severe on the young lamb to do 

 both at the same time. Some, therefore, put off castration a 

 few days later. It should fee performed with still more care 

 in regard to the weather, heating the lamb in advance, etc. 

 An attendant holds the lamb (with a fore and hind-leg grasped 

 in each hand,) in an upright position, with its back placed 

 against his own body. He draws the hind-legs, up and apart, 

 and presses against the lamb's body with suffijient force to 

 cause the lower part of the belly to protrude between the 

 thighs and the scrotum to be well exposed. The operator 

 then cuts off about one-third of the scrotum ; takes each testicle 

 in turn between the thumb and fore-finger, and after sliding 

 down the loose enveloping membrane to the spermatic chord, 

 pulls out the testicle with a moderately quick but not violently 

 jerking motion. The connecting tissues (of the spei-matic 



