170 FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 
as the best cows, and require far less labor. No dairy 
farmer who has suitable land and fixtures for his busi- 
ness, is called upon to give up the avocation he best 
understands, and sacritice his fixtures and cattle to 
embark in a new pursnit, because he has found a sin- 
gle year of depressed prices. No farmer engaged in 
any highly remunerative husbandry should abandon 
it for another. We want no more Merino manias/ 
The proper increase in wool production can be attain- 
ed by putting sheep on soils too poor for profitable 
dairying, by weeding out useless and unprofitable 
horses, by substituting sheep for grazing cattle on 
grain and other farms where they are most profitable, 
by depasturing Jands now uselessly in timber, bram- 
bles, &c., and by raising proper crops to assist in 
cheaply wintering sheep.* 
And the growth of wool is peculiarly adapted to 
the pecuniary means and the circumstances of a por- 
tion of our rural population. Their capital is mostly 
in land. Hired labor is costly. Sheep husbandry 
will render all their cleared land profitably product- 
ive at a less annual expenditure for labor than any 
other branch of farming. By reason of the rapid in- 
crease of sheep, and the great facility of promptly 
improving inferior ones, they will stock a farm well 
more expeditiously, and with far less outlay than 
other animals.t And, lastly, the ordinary processes 
* Sheep can be better and far more economically wintered on hay, 
straw, and turnips, or beets, than on clear hay. By raising these roots, 
then, the farmer can save considerable meadow land and increase his 
pasture, and thus the farm be made to carry more sheep. 
+ Soon after shearing, 15 and sometimes 20 ordinary coarse grade 
ewes can he purchased for $30, the price of a dairy cow. On com- 
mon keep, these will yield an average of three and a half pounds of 
