Robert Bakewell. 
21 
Bakewell was opposed to the practice of folding. Of the 
health and comforts of his flock he was most careful. We read 
that his sheep were kept as clean as racehorses, and were some- 
times put into body-clothes. On the subject of foot-rot he had 
opinions based upon his personal observation. He thought it 
was caused only by floods, never by wetness from rising springs, 
nor from rains which do not flow over the land ; and he ascribed 
it to what he termed the “ slashy ” nature of the grass grown 
under flowing water. One of the facts he had noted was that 
the flooding was not followed by lameness before the end of 
April, and that after the middle of May, and through the 
summer, the disease came, as surely as ever effect followed 
cause, after the water had been turned on the land. He was 
so certain of this that in a manner highly characteristic of his 
habit of turning misfortunes to useful ends, if not quite consistent 
with his kindness of nature, he made use of his discovery. 
When his best-bred sheep, superannuated, were to be fed for 
the butcher, and he thought he had reason to fear that the 
purchaser would resell them to a breeder, he simply flooded a 
field or two, confined them to that part of his land in the 
summer, and invariably found them, when fat, in a sufficiently 
advanced state of foot-rot to prevent their transfer from butcher 
to breeder. 
The story of “ Bakewell’s black ram ” is purposely excluded 
from the foregoing scraps of tradition about the origin of 
the Dishley breed of sheep. Mr. Valentine Barford, for whose 
flock unbroken descent from that of Mr. Bakewell was claimed 
upon the evidence of a carefully-kept private register of pedigree, 
referred to it in his controversy with the Kev. Henry Berry in 
1828, saying that at that time more than fifty years had passed 
since Mr. Bakewell, as stated by Mr. Astley, 1 had used his 
black ram, yet no breeder’s flock had produced more black 
lambs than his (Mr. Barford’s) own flock, although none of 
them had been retained for breeding. Mr. Barford had inter- 
bred his flock very closely from that of Mr. Joseph Robinson, 
one of the members of the Dishley Club from its foundation in 
1783, and Mr. Robinson’s flock had been as closely interbred 
from Mr. Bakewell’s. This allusion to the existence and alleged 
use of the black ram at Dishley may suffice for the present 
purpose of recording, without prejudice, a statement believed 
1 The authority mentioned by Mr. Valentine Barford, I presume, was Mr. 
Bakewell’s neighbour, Mr. Richard Astley, of Odstone, one of Mr. Bakewell’s 
associates as a prominent breeder, and one of the founders of the Smithfield 
Club in 1798. 
