252 PEAIBIE MAKAGEMENT IN SUMMER. 



Prairie sheep husbandry has the same general features 

 everywhere, in the summer. In the winter there are essential 

 differences in its operations in regions of perennial verdure, 

 like Western Texas, and in those of six or seven months 

 verdure, like Central Illinois, Northern Missouri and Kansas. 

 I shall proceed briefly to describe the proper summer manage- 

 ment in all these regions, and the different systems of winter 

 management in the North and South. It will not be 

 necessary to enter upon details, except when the management 

 differs from that of the older regions already described in 

 this work. 



Pkaieib Management in Summee. — In latitude 40 deg., 

 in the basin of the Mississippi — the latitude of Central Illinois 

 and Northern Missouri — sheep can generally find subsistence 

 on the prairies after about the middle of April. As soon as 

 the new grass sprouts in the smallest degree, the immense 

 range supplies them with food. 



Lambing. — Lambs in the last named regions, where they 

 are, as it is termed, " raised on the range," — i. e., where the 

 ewes are kept on the open prairie dui-ing the lambing season 

 — are not allowed to commence coming before the 1st of 

 May, when the feed is expected to be abundant, and the 

 danger of cold storms greatly over. Lambing on the range, 

 however, is at best attended with great labor and care to the 

 shepherd, and no little danger to the young of his charge. 

 In a prairie flock, eight or ten hundred breeding ewes is a 

 moderate number ; and the same circumstances which compel 

 their being turned out on the prairies to lamb — the want of 

 suitable inclosures seeded to domestic grasses — also prevents 

 any division of flocks. When from thirty to fifty lambs are 

 dropped a day, it is a matter of difficulty to get the younger 

 and weaker ones to the folds within the proper time at night, 

 or on the appearance of a storm, without separating them 

 from their dams. When such separation takes place, near 

 nightfall, and twenty or thirty ewes are then running through 

 the flock bleating distractedly for their young, it produces a 

 scene of wild confusion ; lambs are run over and trampled on ; 

 the ewes, in the increasing darkness, do not find their lambs ; 



more than three thousand miles of railroad, wool-growing is more profitable than 

 wheat and corn, our great items of export. How much more, then, is it in the great 

 portion of the North-west, which does not now, and may not for many years, possess 

 the questionable advantages of railroads with which to marlcet wheat or corn in 

 the raw state?" 



