CHAPTER II 

 SHEEP FARMS AND THEIR EQUIPMENTS 



The sheep is preeminently the animal for grazing 

 lands. From this fact, it is supposed by many that 

 the sheep belongs to a frontier country and to rough 

 sections not available for cultivation. The sheep 

 always has gone with the advance guard of civiliza- 

 tion, and, because during the past century there has 

 been so much new territory occupied by civilized 

 man, the world's demand for sheep products has 

 been very largely met from the cheap, newly occupied 

 lands of both North and South America and Aus- 

 tralia. During the last quarter of the nineteenth 

 century, sheep products, especially wool, were so 

 low in the world's markets that the sheep was hardly 

 a competitor in profits on tillable lands, in densely 

 populated regions, with other lines of farming. A 

 generation has grown up in the belief that the sheep 

 has no place on the corn and hog or dairy farm. 



After visiting nearly all parts of the United States 

 and Canada where sheep are kept, the writer is con- 

 firmed in the opinion that the unequal competition 

 eastern farmers have had to meet from cheap western 

 lands is just about over. The rapid settlement of 



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