88 Domerstio ANIMALS. 
substitute. But my impression is decided that free access to 
water is advantageous to sheep, particularly to those having 
lambs; and I should consider it a matter of importance, on a 
sheep farm, to arrange the pastures, if practicable, so as to 
bring water into each of them.” 
6. Shade.— No one who has observed with what eagerness 
sheep seek shade in hot weather, and how they pant and 
apparently suffer when a hot sun is pouring down on their 
nearly naked bodies, will doubt that, both as a matter of hu- 
manity and utility, they should be provided, during the hot 
summer months, with a better shelter than that afforded by a 
common rail fence. Forest trees are the most natural and best 
shades, and it is as contrary to utility as it is to good taste to 
strip them entirely from the sheep-walks. A strip of stone 
wall or close board fence on the south and west sides of the 
pasture will form a passable substitute for trees; but in the 
absence of a]] these, and of buildings of any kind, a shade can 
be cheaply constructed of poles and brush, in the same manner 
as the sheds of the same materials for winter shelter already 
described.” 
7. Lambs.— Lambs are usually dropped in the North from 
the first to the fifteenth of May. In the South, they might 
safely come earlier. It isnot expedient to have them.dropped 
when the weather is cold and boisterous, as they require too 
much care; but the sooner the better after the weather has 
become mild, and the herbage has started sufficiently to give 
the ewes that green food which is required to produce a plenti- 
ful secretion of milk. It is customary in the North to have 
fields of clover, or the earliest of grasses, reserved for the early 
spring feed of the breeding ewes; and if these can be contigu- 
ous to their shelters, it is a great convenience—for the ewes 
should be confined in the latter, on cold and stormy nights, 
during the lambing season, 
“Tf warm and pleasant, and the nights are warmish, I prefer 
to have the lambing take place in the pastures. I think sheep 
are more disposed to own and take kindly to their lambs thus, 
