56 SHEEP EEEDING 



A summary of System III. The main points in cornfield 

 feeding may be summarized as follows : 



1 . Yearlings and wethers will eat from one to three pounds 

 of roughness per pound of grain under dry-lot conditions, 

 and this amount should be available under field conditions. 

 Of course during the early part of the season there may 

 be an abundance of palatable feed found in fence corners, 

 stubble fields, and the corn blades, but later there does not 

 remain in the field much roughness that is satisfactory to a 

 sheep ; therefore it must be supplied in some other way. 



2. Cornfield feeding is labor saving but is wasteful of 

 feed. This statement does not mean that the system is waste- 

 ful from the standpoint of amount of grain not eaten or 

 amount wasted, but rather from the fact that it takes more 

 corn per pound of gain in the field than in the dry lot. A 

 feeder who handles from four thousand to five thousand 

 sheep each year, running some in the fields and feeding 

 others in dry lots, gives these figures : " On a ninety -day feed 

 m the field, a sheep that eats two bushels of corn gains about 

 twenty-one pounds,^ and in the lot this two bushels of corn 

 will make twenty-seven pounds of gain." According to these 

 figures it takes about twenty-eight per cent more corn for 

 a pound of gain in the field than it does in a lot. This is 

 explained by saying that the cornfield sheep roam about so 

 much in getting their grain that it is impossible to secure 

 the high finish that is generally made in the dry lot. 



3. If cornfields are muddy the sheep will not clean up 

 the grain as they go, but ordinarily will work back over it 

 after it dries off ; hence the first portions grazed should 

 always be easily accessible. 



1 In the first case 5.33 pounds of grain made one pound of gain, and in 

 the second case 4.14 pounds of grain made one pound of gain. 



