WASHING SHBBP CONSIDERED. 165 



against "washing in many portions of the Northern States — 

 for the streams are not warm enough usually for washing 

 sheep without injury until about the second week of June. 

 This is true among the high lands of New York* and 

 Northern Pennsylvania, and certainly ought to be still more 

 so in Vermont, New Hampshire, etc., where the snows which 

 feed the streams lie later on the mountains. 



Highly intelligent and candid flock-masters who have tried 

 the experiment, (I have never myself done so,) assure me that 

 Merino sheep sheared a month before the usual period — say 

 from 20th of May to Istof June — get sooner into condition 

 if they are lacking in that particular ; that the wool obtains a 

 better start before the opening of hot weather, and retains it 

 through the year ; and that the sheep have better protection 

 from inclemencies of weather during those periods when they 

 most require it — that is, in the winter — and still more 

 particularly during the cold storms of autumn. Whatever 

 may be thought of the two first of these propositions-^ and 

 they certainly are not unreasonable ones — the last is 

 undeniably true ; and the additional autumn protection 

 alone would be a suflicient reason for earlier shearing, in 

 the absence of any special reason to the contrary. The 

 apprehension of contagious diseases, too, from using the 

 same washing yards, from temporarily occupying the same 

 fields during the process, and even from driving sheep 

 over the same roads, is, as I know fi-om bitter experience, f 

 perfectly well founded ; and it is often highly inconvenient, if 

 not altogether impracticable, for the fanner to wash his sheep 

 without using the same washing pens, or at least the same 

 roads, with the public. 



And what sound objection can the buyer have to the 



* My residence is less tlian 1,200 feet above tide-water, surrounded by no lofty 

 hills, and I know that here it is generally difficult to find the water as warm as it 

 ought to be to wash sheep, before about the time specified in the text. 



t I have had four different visitations of hoof-rot in my flocks — all clearly and 

 distinctly tracealble to contagion. The third case occurred ftom some wethers 

 affected by that disease, getting (mce among a flock of my breeding ewes. The 

 wethers were found with the ewes at 9 oVlock, A. M., and were not with them at 

 night-fall the preceding day. They might therefore have been with them a few hours, 

 or only a few moments. In the fourth case, half a dozen of my lambs and sheep 

 jumped into the road when a lame flock was passing, and remained with them half an 

 hour. Both lots of animals were thus exposed when I was not aware there was a 

 sheep having hoof-rot in the town I The diseased sheep had just been brought ip by 

 drovers, and the farmer who took them to pasture, in the lot adjoining mine, in the 

 third case, did not dream of their being thus affected : and they had mixed with mine 

 before I knew there was a new flock in the neighborhood. I mention these facts to 

 show how readily sheep contract the disease, and how idle it would be for any man 

 to lay aside all fears of contagion in going to and occupying a public washing pen — 

 because he supposed he knew there were no diseased flocks m his neighborhood. 

 There could be no better place for contracting hoof-rot or scab, than a wa&hing-pen. 



