Range Sheep 133 
a small part cut out for the neck. A string is looped in 
each corner on the lower end of the blanket through which 
the hind legs of the lamb are put. On each side of the 
front of the blanket a string is fastened to be tied across 
the lamb’s chest. The use of the blanket is limited to 
stormy weather. In lambing on the open range many 
lambs are lost because of cold rains or snows that occur 
in the first few hours of the lamb’s life. If it is storming 
at the time the lamb is dropped, one of these blankets is 
placed on the lamb and left from two to five hours as the 
occasion may require. Care has to be exercised in its 
use as the blanket may tend to cause some ewes to disown 
their lambs. 
When the range is level, a lambing wagon is often used. 
This wagon has a broad, flat-bottomed rack, which is 
divided into about twenty-one small pens, each barely 
large enough to hold the ewe and lamb. Each pen is so 
arranged that it opens toward the back. This wagon 
goes out on the range every morning. As each ewe 
lambs, she and her lamb are placed in one of these pens. 
As soon as the wagon is full, it returns_to the corral 
where the ewes and lambs are placed in the care of an 
experienced shepherd. Here the ewes with young lambs 
are banded together into an infant herd, much the same 
as when the wagon is not used. At first, there are about 
100 in each infant band, but as the lambs grow older the 
smaller bands are put together, thus gradually increasing 
the herd until at the end of about ten or fifteen days 
there will be 1200 or 1500 ewes with their lambs in each 
band. The lamb bands are from this time on driven 
greater distances from the home ranch, but are not usually 
moved to the summer range until they are a month or 
six weeks old. Ewes with their new born lambs are kept 
