16 BULLETIN 313, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
rams sold in the 1914 Sydney sale at an average of $42 per head. 
During the same week one commission firm sold sheep of various 
breeds at the following average prices per head: 50 Shropshire flock 
rams at $8; 694 Lincoln stud and flock rams and ewes at $20; 551 
Border Leicesters (mainly flock rams) at $28; and 450 Romney 
Marsh stud and flock rams and ewes at $25. 
SHEEP BREEDERS’ RECORDS. 
While American and Australian sheep breeders seem earlier to 
have been in agreement as to the points of wool-producing sheep, in 
the last quarter of a century their ideas have diverged. In contrast 
to the requirements of registration and the multiplicity of flock books 
in the United States the great Australian Merino sheep-breeding busi- 
ness still progresses with only private records. These private records 
are in some cases fairly complete but very seldom permit the full 
tabulation of a pedigree for three generations. In selling rams at 
from $2,000 to $5,000, which is commonly done, the descent or im- 
mediate parentage is a consideration, but is vouched for only by the 
breeder, which is really the only guaranty received by the purchaser 
of any animal having its pedigree entered in an association’s registry. 
SHOW SHEEP. 
Show-ring results apparently carry little weight with Australasian 
sheep breeders. Their regard for a line of breeding or for any par- 
ticular flock is based upon the sale of wool shorn from the offspring 
of representatives of such strains or flocks. Australian show man- 
agers seem to have succeeded somewhat better than those in America 
in having fine-wool sheep exhibited fairly. Evidences and claims of 
early or stubble shearing are not missing, however, and stud breeders 
whose flocks are well established prefer to offer their stock for sale 
without showing. In the Sydney annual show and sales sheep not 
exhibited usually sell higher than the prize winners. 
Having once secured satisfactory results by using rams from a 
particular stud flock the commercial sheep raiser is assured that 
other rams from the same stud will possess and transmit the same 
general qualities. This is especially true in Australia because the 
older stud flocks make but limited, if any, use of sires bred on other 
stations. The American breeder’s insistence upon an outcross in each 
generation finds its opposite in the Australian’s preference for stud 
sires of his own breeding. Of course the size of the flocks renders it 
possible to avoid very close matings. In some cases carefully bred 
stud flocks have retained their vigor for over 20 years with practi- 
cally no outside blood. 
