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The Decline in Sheep Breeding. [Aug., 



THE DECLINE IN SHEEP 

 BREEDING. 



Sir Henry Eew, K.C.B. 



"^The subject I am invited to bring before you for discussion 

 is that of ' ' the depletion of the breeding flocks of the country 

 and the lessened production of cereal food resulting therefrom." 

 That is a practical subject, and I need not say that I have no 

 pretension to speak upon it from a practical standpoint. But 

 the subject also involves the consideration of statistical facts and 

 economic tendencies to which I have given some attention, and 

 it is to these that I shall confine myself in the hope that they 

 may be of some help in the subsequent discussion. 



Decrease in Numbers. — It is a sound principle — not invariably 

 adopted in pubHc controversy — to ascertain the facts before 

 drawing conclusions. That there has been a reduction in the 

 number of sheep in this country is notorious ; but it is desirable 

 at the outset to obtain some measure of its extent. The agricul- 

 tural returns which are collected annually in June afford the only 

 measure we have, and they give us the number of sheep in the 

 country year by year for over fifty years. If we summarise 

 these returns in quinquennial periods we find that the total stock 

 of sheep in Great Britain has varied as follows, the numbers 

 representing miUions : — 



1870-4 

 1875-9 

 1880-4 

 1885-y 

 18U0-4 



28-6 1895-9 



28-4 1900-4 



25-3 1905-9 



25-8 1910-4 



27-G 1915-9 



26-6 

 25-9 

 2G-3 

 25-4 

 23-7 



Leaving out of account the war period, which we will consider 

 later, these figures would seem to indicate not only that the 

 flocks of the country after the disasters of the early ' ' eighties 

 never recovered the position which they held in the " seventies," 

 but that during the present century they had fallen substantially 

 below the standard of the " nineties." There is, however, a 

 disturbing element w^hich materially affects a comparison over a 

 long period of returns which represent the enumeration at a fixed 

 date each year of the total number of sheep then living. The age 

 at which sheep are slaughtered is on the average now consider- 



* An address delivered at the Darlington Conference of the National Sheep 

 Breeders' Association on 29th June, 1920. 



