CHAPTER XIX 

 CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF SHEEP 



The ability to care for sheep successfully is a faculty to be 

 increased and strengthened by careful study and experience. 

 All that may be written is of no consequence without practice. 

 The timidity of sheep, dainty appetites, inability to endure 

 dampness, draughts, mud lots, as well as their liability to para- 

 site infection, must be well understood by those who expect to 

 make sheep growing profitable. The knowledge is very easy 

 to obtain, and methods of combating are not difficult, but they 

 demand persistent effort on the part of the sheep owner. 



Sheep may be successfully grown on any general farm or where 

 there is an opportxmity for changes in grazing. When the 

 farm has the equipment and is conveniently located to a rail- 

 road leading to one of our larger cities, winter-lamb production 

 may be most profitable, whereas if the farm lacks equipment 

 and has much cheap grazing land, some other form of sheep 

 production would doubtless yield the greater profit. Each 

 farmer must make a careful study of his conditions, such as 

 location, facilities for shipping, demands of his market, condi- 

 tion of the soil, and the like, then lay his plans accordingly. 



Wherever the farm, whatever the conditions, whenever sheep 

 growing is to be practiced, ample provision must be made for 

 change in pasture. Sheep may live, or at least the older ones 

 may, without change, but if put into a pasture in the spring, 

 and compelled to remain there until fall, they will never attain 

 the size they would have attained had there been a frequent 

 change of pasture. Where sheep are thus pastured, the lambs 



422 



