212 
SCRAPS FROM MY NOTE BOOK.-NO. 3 . 
three-fourths blood, and some of them were very- 
valuable milkers :—30 jennies, breeding from a 
fine blood horse—one of the jennies is the biggest 
animal of the kind I ever saw—keeps about 30 
high-bred horses and brooding mares, upon which 
he serves his big jack, and raises fine mules, one of 
which at work in his team is about 17 hands high, 
and heavy in proportion. His stock is all first-rate, 
except hogs, and not one of them will he keep on 
his place—because hogs will eat lambs. And if 
you ask why he don’t keep them shut up in the 
pen, I can tell you that restraining the liberty of a 
hog in that despotic manner, is contrary to the free 
institutions of the Southern and W estern States. 
His flocks were at grass when I was there, but 
in the great drouth then prevailing, his land was 
overstocked and the feed poor ; but he intended to 
shear his long wool in a few days, and start them 
for Mississippi, which would give him more room 
and feed at home. Mr. C. assured me that he 
takes care of this farm and stock with four field 
hands, assisted occasionally by some female house 
servants. But the wonder is accomplished by the 
never-tiring vigilance of the active master. I have 
never seen a shepherd more devoted to his business. 
There are few old sheep that he does not know by 
name on description, and can name the quality of 
the fleece. And he pointed out to me several ewes 
which I judge were Saxon Merino, that were part 
of five hundred lambs got by one ram in 1826, 
which I think a very extraordinary performance. 
It was accomplished by keeping the ram up, and 
very judiciously fed, and serving him only once to 
each ewe,, which was then immediately removed. 
Some of these nineteen-year old ewes had fine 
healthy lambs by their side. 
The foddering season where Mr. Cockrill lives, 
which is about latitude 36°, does not average over 
three months a year. He feeds hay, millet, oats 
in sheaf, corn fodder, and a moderate supply of 
Southern corn, by one gill a day, which Mr. Allen 
says in his note to my article in the March No., is 
not so oily as Northern corn. At any rate, Mr. Cock¬ 
rill finds it good feed for his sheep, and is well paid 
for ‘feeding a moderate supply, by an increased 
quantity and quality of wool, besides the advantage 
of having the ewes in fine condition at the lambing 
season, which is in April, and after the grass has 
got a good start. A visit to the old shepherd is not 
only pleasant but profitable. I have scarcely spent 
a day more satisfactorily than while riding one of 
his beautiful blood horses over his place, and ex¬ 
amining his flocks, and listening to the interesting 
and instructive conversation of one pf so much ex¬ 
perience and good sense. 
Mr. Cockrill has a number of sheep which he 
drove when he moved his flock from Tennessee to 
Mississippi. In 1835 he sold his cotton plantation 
with the intention of quitting the business, and fol¬ 
lowing that of wool-growing solely, and brought up 
his flock and drove them to Lexington, Ky., in 
search of a home, which he did not find to suit 
himself, until he returned to his own native hills 
on the Cumberland. Notwithstanding all this 
driving in a warm climate and hot summer, he 
takes pride in the fact that some of his sheep on 
exhibition, won the prize cup, over some of the 
•pampered flock of Henry Clay and other -wool- 
growers of Kentucky, that fall. His original fine- 
woolled sheep are from a Saxony importation of 
1824. His fine clip of 1844 averaged 62i cents a 
pound, and was sold for shipment to France. He 
has some sheep which he has made by crossing 
Saxony and Bakewell together, that for long silky 
fleeces exceed anything I have ever seen. All 
the long-woolled sheep are sheared twice a year. 
In Mississippi, about 5 or 6 degrees farther south, 
both fine and coarse-woolled sheep are sheared 
twice a year. Mr. C still prefers that country to 
grow wool, but not for his family residence, and he 
says what I have often said, that no man can suc¬ 
ceed with sheep who depends upon his negroes— 
the master himself must be the slave. And this is 
why he keeps his flock in Tennessee instead of 
Mississippi; not on account of the sheep-family, 
but his own. 
The grasses cultivated for hay are timothy, 
orchard and blue grass, and clover. The soil, as I 
have said, is strong limestone, and supported a 
natural growth of large timber, of oak, elm, sugar- 
tree, walnut, ash, hackberry, poplar, hickory, &c. 
Fencing timber is already becoming scarce, but 
whenever they shall learn how to build stone 
fences, they have the material in. great abundance. 
Mr. C. trains his sheep not to jump, and if they 
were not so, his fences would not restrain them. 
The object Mr. C. has in view in sending the long- 
woolled sheep to Mississippi,, instead of the fine- 
woolled ones, is, that he intends to feed his negroes, 
largely upon the heavy, fat mutton of this breed 
and use the wool for negro clothing. By shearing 
them twice a year, their fleeces do not become bur- 
thensome, and the gain upon shearing twice a year 
instead of once, he finds to he fully 15 per cent. 
Mr. Cockrill keeps his sheep in moderate sized 
flocks, in summer as well as winter, with tho 
rams always separate. 
I mentioned his manner of feeding in the March 
No., upon the ground, without rack or trough ; and. 
I am well satisfied that it is not the slovenly way 
that some of your Eastern readers will be inclined 
to think it is. It is the natural way for the animal 
to pick up its food from the ground, and by the 
manner of feeding in alternate lots, so that the hay 
is laid upon the ground before the sheep are let in, 
they do not waste it. There is another advantage, 
the seed does not get in the wool as it does from 
racks. 
It must not be supposed, because the land of 
Mr. C. is hilly and rocky, that it is never muddy. 
You, Mr. Editor, can endorse for me w T hen I say 
that no land in the world can exceed some of the 
steep side hills of the West, that are apparently 
half stone, for deep sticky mud. But by shifting 
the feeding ground" and giving plenty of room, the 
sheep can be kept out of the mud. There is a 
great error prevailing in the West, in my opinion, 
in confining sheep in winter in too close quarters. 
Give them a chance to range and browse and get 
their noses to the ground. They will be more 
healthy. Mr. Cockrill thinks it a great folly to 
keep a large capital in Tennessee invested in 
“ woolly heads,” when “ woolly backs” afford so 
much better returns of interest. In fact, he is well 
satisfied, and so am I, that the raising of cotton so. 
far north, will not pay any interest upon the capital 
