156 Western Live-stock Management 
will necessarily vary considerably in condition, and some 
will be ready for market long before the others. The 
feeder will therefore go through the bunch a number of 
times during the winter and top out the best to send to 
market. Handled in this manner, some of the sheep will 
not remain on feed over thirty days, while others will 
remain on feed as much as three or four months. 
FEEDS AND RATION 
Corn is perhaps the best grain for feeding lambs, but it 
is not available in the lamb-fattening districts of the 
West except eastern Colorado. In this particular district 
the lambs are all fed alfalfa hay raised on the farms, to- 
gether with corn shipped in from Kansas and Nebraska. 
The finest lambs produced in America come from this 
section. In other states, oats, barley, bran, and screen- 
ings are commonly used. Screenings are variable in their 
cost and in their value, but in most cases will produce 
just as rapid gains as barley, though requiring larger 
quantities. When a lamb would be fed one pound of 
grain a day, he would be given perhaps one and one-fourth 
to two pounds a day when screenings are used. If the 
screenings are very chaffy, as much as three pounds a day 
are sometimes fed. In this case, no hay is used, since the 
chaff and cob in the screenings afford the necessary 
roughage. 
While alfalfa is most popular, clover hay, free from 
weeds or other grass, and well cured, will give equal re- 
sults. Prairie hays and wild hays of various sorts are 
seldom used, and in practically no case do they give the 
same satisfaction as alfalfa. The Wyoming Experiment 
Station has made a long series of tests of alfalfa in com- 
