FEEDING GROWING ANIMALS 355 



occasion to consider substitutes for this food. The fact 

 first in order and most important in this connection is 

 that well-fed mothers are absolutely essential to rapid 

 growth. A lamb must be fed through its dam. Nothing 

 is more pitiable than the sight of a pair of hungry twin 

 lambs making an effort to satisfy their insistent demands 

 for growth with the mUk furnished by a small, lean, 

 imder-fed mother. The treatment of the ewe before 

 the birth of her yoxmg should be such as to prepare her 

 for the strain of supplying a generous flow of milk. 



Ewes that are suckling lambs, while fed from the bam, 

 should be supplied with good clover or alfalfa hay, or hay 

 from fine mixed grasses. Pea and bean straws are excel- 

 lent coarse feeds for sheep. Timothy hay is an abomina- 

 tion as sheep food, especially under these conditions. 

 The grain ration should not be less than three-fourths 

 of a pound daily, made up in part of one or more of the 

 highly nitrogenous feeding-stuffs. It is also desirable to 

 feed a small proportion of some succulent food. What is 

 needed is a milk-producing ration, and the discussion of 

 feeding cows for milk production in a preceding chapter 

 is in part pertinent to ewes. Com, oats, wheat bran or 

 middlings, beans, peas, gluten and oil meals are all useful 

 in making up such a ration. With safe feeding, one pound 

 daily of a mixtiu-e of oil or gluten meal one part, wheat 

 bran two parts, and corn meal two parts, combined with 

 two or three pounds of roots or silage and what coarse 

 feed the appetitite will bear, is a good mUk ration, and 

 wiU bring the ewes through the strain of suckling lambs 

 in good condition. 



452. Grain foods accessible to lambs. — ^If it is desired 

 to produce the most rapid growth of the lambs, they 

 should also have access from nearly the first to a grain 



