SHEEP ON THE PRAIRIES. 
83 
Q. Can these marls and shell sands he applied 
with advantage to the land ? 
A. Yes, either as a top-dressing to grass lands, 
and especially to sour, coarse, and mossy grass,— 
or they may be plowed or harrowed in upon arable 
fields,—and especially they may be applied with 
advantage and in large quantity to peaty soils. 
Q. Can they not be used also in making com¬ 
posts ? 
A. Yes, mixed with earth and vegetable matter, 
or with animal matter, such as fish refuse, whale 
blubber, &c., and even with farm-yard dung, they 
will often produce very good effects. 
Q. How would you ascertain the presence of 
lime in a soil, or in a substance supposed to be a 
marl ? 
A. By putting a little of it into a glass and pour¬ 
ing upon it either vinegar or w T eak spirit of salt 
(muriatic acid). If any bubbling up (effervescence) 
appeared, I should say that lime was present. 
SHEEP ON THE""PRAIRIES.— No. 3. 
In Vol. 4, page 55, I promised to give your 
readers another article upon the above subject. 
Miserable health has been my excuse for this long 
delay in doing so, and being now a close prisoner 
from the same cause, in my house, will be my 
reason for saying a few words more at this time. 
In my last communication I had brought the flock 
into winter quarters. Whoever has had any expe¬ 
rience in the matter, knows how difficult it is to 
bring them in, in good condition, from the prairie 
grass. It is a fact that never must be lost sight of, 
that luxuriant as the grass is in the summer, and 
good as is the hay made from it, the fall feed upon 
tiie prairie is as poor as poor need be. And it is 
this that produces death among the new flocks, 
more than every other cause. To prevent this the 
first year, commence feeding grain in small quanti¬ 
ties by the middle of October, and continue it until 
snow comes; at which time the sheep will readily 
take hold of the hay, which they will not do while 
they can pick up a scant supply of frost-bitten 
herbage. Oats in the sheaf, I look upon as very 
good feed for sheep, particularly where you have no 
other convenience than the bare ground. 
Mark R. Cockrill, of Tennessee, whom I look 
upon as one of the best shepherds in the country, 
says he prefers corn for his sheep, and he always 
feeds it upon the ground. He selects some clean 
dry spot of sward, and sows the com broadcast, 
and then lets in the flock to pick it up. In feeding 
hay, he .follows the same course; never laying 
down the hay while the sheep are in the same lot. 
By this means the sheep never run over each other 
to get at the feeder, or get crushed under the sled or 
wagon if the hay is hauled out, as it always should 
be (a). Mr. Ccckrill never confines his sheep, to 
make them « stand up to the rack, fodder or no 
fodder,” but gives them a broad range summer and 
winter. He has one of the best flocks that I know 
of, which consisted when I was there last spring, of 
1,400 head of fine wool, and 600 head of long wool. 
He also has a cross between the Cotswold and 
Saxon, which are most beautiful animals. I have 
some interesting notes of his flock, which I hope to 
fce able to write out some day. 
One of the first objects with the shepherd iiuon 
the prairie, should be to get a good stock of domes¬ 
tic grass for fall feed. A good substitute may be 
found in rye sown very early—say in August cer¬ 
tain. I believe that blue grass will be found to be 
the most permanent pasture that can be made for 
sheep, and that it may be worked in upon the prairie 
by fencing small lots and yarding sheep, which 
will soon kill the wild grass, and then by sowing 
the blue grass seed, it will take well without plow¬ 
ing. As I before remarked, the greatest difficulty 
in our soft, rich, black prairie soil, is the mud. Great 
care must be taken in yarding sheep, both summer 
and winter, not to confine them in too small a space, 
as I know of no animal that has a greater antipathy 
to lying down in the mud, than a sheep; and no 
treatment more likely to procure disease and death. 
If your yards, where you usually feed and keep the 
flock, get muddy, you must move them, or they will 
die. Don’t say that you have nowhere else to put 
them. You must find a place if it is a mile from 
home, and you have to haul your hay and camp 
with them every night for a month. I have proved 
by experiment, that sheep will do better without 
water than in water. Last winter while I was at 
the South, one of my neighbors who had taken 225 
of my sheep upon a contract to keep for the increase 
of the flock, giving me the wool, lost one-third of 
them, as I believe, solely from keeping them in too 
small a yard, where for wmeks at a time the poor 
creatures never had a dry spot to lie down upon. 
And I have been told that at times they stood in 
mud knee deep. Of course I took from this brutal 
man the whole of the increase, having no more 
mercy upon him than he had upon the poor crea¬ 
tures that fell into his hands; and I feel as though I 
did not ptinish him sufficiently at that time. Now, 
I fear, there are hundreds of just such flock-masters, 
—ignorant, stupid, unfeeling, and indolent. They 
shelter themselves and families, in a rude uncom¬ 
fortable log cabin, through the cracks of which the 
winds sweep almost as freely as they do through the 
rail fence that forms the only shelter for their cattle, 
unless they choose to be located near some friendly 
grove ; -which is the reason that I have advised the 
new T settling shepherd to seek such a spot, where 
the comfort and health of his flock will be greatly 
promoted by giving them the privilege of a stroll 
through the bushes, of a sunny day in winter. 
Many excellent locations can be found where it 
will be very inconvenient to find a wmshing place. 
But let not this objection be considered an insuper¬ 
able one. It is not a very expensive or trouble¬ 
some matter to make an artificial washing place. 
Select some little rill, and excavate a place big 
enough to put in a vat 4 feet deep, 8 feet wide, and 
16 feet long; and if necessary add other vats of 
the same dimensions. It is a mistaken notion that it 
is necessary to have clear and swift running water 
to wmsh sheep in; for it is a fact, that until the 
water in the vat actually becomes thick with filth, 
it will loosen the dirt in the fleece better than clean 
water. Even when there is no kind of a stream to 
construct the washing place in, it could be supplied 
from a good pump in a shallow well. In many 
places where sheep are wrnshed in streams and 
ponds, they accumulate so much mud and sand 
