200 Western Live-stock Management 



reached by horses and cattle. Where gravel is available, 

 a concrete dipping vat is the cheapest in the end. The 

 vat itself is about ten to fifteen feet in length. With a 

 long tank, sheep do not try to jump over it and thereby 

 injure themselves by striking the other side. All the 

 panels in the corrals and runs should be as srnooth as 

 possible and free from projecting nails and slivers, because 

 crowding sheep are likely to cut and bruise themselves on 

 such projections, and in the case of dipping in lime and 

 sulfur or dips of that nature, blood poisoning may result. 

 There are various types of approaches to the tank, some 

 which use a decoy and others which have a trap-door and 

 still others which have no special device for getting the 

 sheep into the vat. The decoy system possibly is the 

 best. Sheep have a great desire for company and will 

 usually endeavor to go where they see another sheep, and 

 in their effort to arrive at the decoy fall into the tank. 

 This system renaoves nearly all of the labor of pushing 

 the sheep into the dip. The trap-door arrangement works 

 fairly well, but the sheep have to be pushed more or less. 

 In the other method, there usually is a small inclosure 

 just at the beginning of the tank into which a lot of 

 sheep are run, and a man catches each sheep and forces 

 it into the vat. 



One of the essentials of a good dipping vat is that the 

 outlet should not be made too steep or the sheep may 

 injure their feet and strain themselves in getting out. 



The draining pen is so constructed that all of the dip 

 will drain back into the vat. The dip usually runs from 

 the draining pen into a well, or catch basin, where the 

 sediment settles to the bottom, while the dip runs back 

 into the vat. The draining pen is divided in two, with a 

 -swinging door between, so that one side can be filled up, 



