200 Western Live-stock Management 
reached by horses and cattle. Where gravel is available, 
a concrete dipping vat is the cheapest in the end. The 
vat itself is about ten to fifteen feet in length. With a 
long tank, sheep do not try to jump over it and thereby 
injure themselves by striking the other side. All the 
panels in the corrals and runs should be as smooth as 
possible and free from projecting nails and slivers, because 
crowding sheep are likely to cut and bruise themselves on 
such projections, and in the case of dipping in lime and 
sulfur or dips of that nature, blood poisoning may result. 
There are various types of approaches to the tank, some 
which use a decoy and others which have a trap-door and 
still others which have no special device for getting the 
sheep into the vat. The decoy svstem possibly is the 
best. Sheep have a great desire for company and will 
usually endeavor to go where they see another sheep, and 
in their effort to arrive at the decoy fall into the tank. 
This system removes nearly all of the labor of pushing 
the sheep into the dip. The trap-door arrangement works 
fairly well, but the sheep have to be pushed more or less. 
In the other method, there usually is a small inclosure 
just at the beginning of the tank into which a lot of 
sheep are run, and a man catches each sheep and forces 
it into the vat. 
One of the essentials of a good dipping vat is that the 
outlet should not be made too steep or the sheep may 
injure their feet and strain themselves in getting out. 
The draining pen is so constructed that all of the dip 
will drain back into the vat. The dip usually runs from 
the draining pen into a well, or catch basin, where the 
sediment settles to the bottom, while the dip runs back 
into the vat. The draining pen is divided in two, with a 
swinging door between, so that one side can be filled up, 
