FALL TEBATMBNT OF BREEDING BWES. 203 



Stable or barn-yard in 'winter, between recruiting up and 

 getting into condition two dozen, or two hundred lean, 

 reduced sheep. The little handful of "natives" choosing 

 every morsel of their food over one or two hundred acres of 

 land, through the summer, had high condition to fall back on, 

 in the pinch of the early winter ; and when put into the barn- 

 yards with the cattle and young horses, tbey still ohose all the 

 best morsels of the hay — robbing the latter animals — so 

 that they not only made a shift to live, but usually got round 

 to the next spring in tolerable order. True, when let out to 

 grass again, their condition began to change so rapidly that 

 they frequently shed off nearly all their wool — so that many 

 of them had not half a pound a piece at shearing ; and those 

 which escaped this were very likely to have their fleeces half 

 ruined by ootting. But what of all this ? This was the way 

 things were done in those days ! 



Brought up under such traditions, many of our older 

 farmers who consider it highly essential as well as profitable 

 to give their cows, horses and other animals, artificial and 

 extra feed a month before the winter sets in, consider every 

 pound of fodder bestowed on sheep at that time, so much 

 taken from the profits which these animals are hound, under 

 all circumstances, to yield to their owners • — a total loss ! 

 A more absurd and pernicious notion could not prevail. If 

 sheep could withstand the effects of such treatment with as 

 little danger to life as the horse or cow, it would still occasion 

 a much greater proportionable loss in their products.* But 

 they can not. The former are capable of being raised at any 

 period of the year, from the lowest condition of leanness, 

 without danger. The muscular and vascular systems of the 

 sheep are so much weaker, that if they become reduced below 

 a certain point in winter — and if they herded together in 

 considerable numbers — their restoration to good condition is 

 always difficult and doubtful, and, in unfavorable winters, 

 impracticable. Their progress thenceforth is frequently about 

 as follows : If fed liberally with grain, their appetites become 

 poor and capricious, or if they eat freely it is followed by 



* I urge no " petting " or enervating system of treatment. I have not five times 

 ■within tliirty years fed hay or grain, or brought in the body of my store sheep from 

 their summer pastures, before the fall of snow — which generally occurs in this 

 climate not far from the first of December. Bnt I should have done it in all cases, if 

 they had not sufficient feed in their pastures. In this respect I would put them on 

 precisely the same footing with cows and horses. And I would sooner limit the feed 

 of either of them in the winter, than during the month preceding winter. Unless the 

 fall feed was unusually abundant and good, I have always fed my lambs and crones 

 pnmpkins, tomip tops, grain, etc., and a little hay as soon as they would eat it. 



