VOL. LII. No. 2275. 
NEW YORK SEPTEMBER 2, 1893. 
PRICE, THREE CENTS 
$1.00 PER YEAR. 
SHEEP FARMING. 
Home Lambs for Market and Home Market for Lambs. 
Part II. 
“Mind Your Own Business.” 
In my introductory paper I referred to the special¬ 
izing of original farm work, thus giving rise to the 
other callings. The butcher’s and market-man’s 
business is an illustration of this. Men now living, 
and not old, remember when meat markets except in 
cities and large towns, were unknown, and farmers 
disposed of he product themselves by the quarter, 
side, etc., as a regular part of farm work; and the 
customers even came after what they wanted instead 
of having it delivered. In my own market town 
a few years ago there was no regular butcher 
or meat market; now there are three. I also 
intimated that the farmers have come to be at a 
disadvantage in this general “ division of labor,” 
not duly and equitably sharing in the prrgress 
and advantages produced by it. In the butcher’s 
and market-man’s business we have an illustra¬ 
tion of this also ; and the scheme herein pro¬ 
posed is no new discovery, for it simply requires 
that the farmer should go back to the original 
practice of doing his own marketing at least 
until such time as he shall be able to secure 
service in that line on more satisfactory terms, 
and the small size of the sheep makes retailing by the 
farmer possible summer and winter. 
The Decline of the Sheep Industry. 
This has been variously attributed to the tariff, to 
dogs, etc., but may it not in a large measure be laid at 
the doors of the butchers and market-men? not that 
they get too much from the consumer, but that they 
get almost as much for dres ing and selling as they 
give t. e farmer for the care, capital and keeping 
necessary to raise and fit the lambs for sale. To 
illustrate, from my own experience; referring to 
memoranda, I find that in Au¬ 
gust, 1890, I slaughtered a lamb 
weighing 57 pounds (unusually 
light weight) receiving $5 54 for tiffin 
the quarters, leaving the pelt, 
which sold with others at 60 cents : 
— 36 14 in all. At seven cents 
live weight, I should have re¬ 
ceived 33.99, and at six cents, the * 
more probable price at that time 
of year, only 33.42. Thus, by 
dressing and marketing for my- sji 
self, I saved 32.72, cr nearly 
three-quarters as much as I 
should have received, and as in 
the season for lambs, I market 
one day each week from two to 
six much larger lambs than that, 
the saving thus effected gives 
quite satisfactory results for the 
time and trouble, say 35 to 310 A Group o 
for the day’s work. Indeed, the 
average price of my lambs for the year quoted was a 
little over 37 each, whereas it would probably have 
fallen below 35 had they been sold alive to the 
butchers. Last year many of my lambs brought over 
38 each, and I think it quite possible with good com¬ 
mon sheep to raise the average above that figure, and 
the average income from each sheep, including the 
wool, to 39 or 310; and that without catering to the 
somewhat limited and higher-priced early “ spring 
lamb” trade. I sell many of the earlier lambs younger 
in this way; and though what is gained in price is 
lost in weight, it leaves the sheep free the rest of the 
season, and more pasturage either to fatten animals 
for the market or to keep them for a new crop. Pos¬ 
sibly the market-men are not getting unduly rich at 
present, but they should get more for their meat. 
Certainly, if it costs more than formerly to serve a 
more fastidious and epicurean public, the customer, 
not the farmer, should pay for the service. The extra 
cost, however, seems to be taken out of the farmer. 
On this point a farmer lately told me of once receiving 
10 cents per pound, live weight, for 10 lambs weigh¬ 
ing 100 pounds each. Tc-day from five cents to seven 
cents would probably be all they would bring, making 
33 to 35 difference on each lamb, and 330 to 350 in the 
income on such a flock of 10 sheep. Give us the old- 
time prices for lambs, and our hills will soon be covered 
with flocks, in spite of the dogs, and by skipping the 
market-men, we can even now get those old-time prices. 
-a? 'if* 
A Ewe and her Two Lambs, Fig. 195. 
The advantages to the consumers consist not only 
in better flavored meat, but in at least the probability 
that it is more thoroughly wholesome than that 
bought of market-men whose lambs have been mostly 
transported long distances by rail, heated by over¬ 
driving, worried by separation from their dams, and, 
perhaps deprived of food and water for many hours. 
The notion that my lambs were better flavored than 
those of the market-men I at first thought likely to be 
merely a fashionable whim or mere complimentary 
talk; but it seems to be quite the universal belief, 
and an ex-butcher gives it as his opinion that lambs 
gw* 
A Group of Good Dorset Sheep. The Woolly-Coated Middleman. Fig. 196 
brought long distances packed in cars, are “losing” 
from start to finish, and that the best flavors go first. 
Furthermore, I have been told that lambs are now 
and then taken out dead, and a man who is doing 
much of the butchering for a wholesale dealer has 
told me (innocently enough) that the pelts of lambs 
that sometimes get overheated “stick” closer, and 
are m^re difficult to take off than others. It is hardly 
questionable, then, that the meat is also affected. 
One other advantage : barring unusual circumstances, 
as a sudden storm, e. g., the lamb is delivered the day 
it is killed, and customers can judge better how 
long to keep it for proper “ ripening.” It is usually 
furnished on Thursdays, and used probably the fol¬ 
lowing Sunday and later, 
Dressing for a Private Trade. 
There are a good many farmers, however, who get 
up at 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning, winter and sum¬ 
mer, and work hard till night, seldom “ taking a day 
off,” and feeling almost guilty when doing so. Such 
would be astonished and indignant to be called lazy 
and lacking in push. Set before them, however, a 
task requiring an exercise of mental and moral force, 
pains taking care and perseverance, and they shrink 
from it. To all intents and purposes, they are merely 
human working-machines, “ geared ” by long habit to 
work in certain grooves. Any departure from these 
suggests “a lion without” in the form of new mat¬ 
ters to be looked up and performed. And very likely 
many are, and will be, deterred from doing their 
own marketing of lambs by the thought of the 
trouble of learning to dress them properly, and 
^ of overcoming slowness, and of looking up a 
market for them. It is, especially at first, a 
little unpleasant, and I should very much prefer 
to let handling the lambs remain a business by 
itself, but I cannot afford to pay the price for 
having this distasteful trouble and care taken 
off my shoulders. Primarily farming is a com- 
binat.on of all other trades and professions, and 
the farmer above all men should be “ ready for 
any good work”—a skilled Jack-of-all-trades 
in case of need, or in case of unreasonable exac¬ 
tions by the subsidiary callings. The following 
directions may be of service to some one : 
Watch a butcher dres? a lamb if possible, then go at 
it in much the same way yourself, observing neatness 
in all things. Wrap the caul like a veil neatly around 
the hind-quarters, letting it fall down in front. When 
it is cool, cut the lamb in halves, letting half the caul 
cling to each hind-quarter. Cut, say, half a dozen ribs 
on to the hindquarter, thus giving some of the “rib 
chops” to that quarter. With an axe, heavy hatchet 
or cleaver, “chop” between each pair of ribs, and 
with about equal frequency along the loin well back 
_ to 'he leg. Also break the leg 
bone two or three inches above 
the gambrel. In like manner cut 
between the ribs and along the 
neck of the fore-quarter. All ribs 
■ should be cut once or twice in 
two as to length. Peel out the 
shoulder-blade and smooth back 
'Jb w ' the meat. Then, if desirable, it 
H r can be stuffed, and in any case is 
more readily carved, and almost 
If'" as good as the more expensive 
¥*$«$%/ hind-quarter. The fore-quarter 
may also be cut almost entirely 
into very good “ chops” for home 
use or sale. Each quarter should 
fs&P' be neatly done up in brown wrap- 
ping paper. The pelts should be 
salted as soon as possible after 
removal. 
i. Fig. 196. Usually I sell a quarter of lamb 
to a family each week or every 
second week, and now and then a family takes two 
quarters a week. The hind-quarters generally weigh 
from 7 to 12 pounds each, and range in price from 
early spring to fall about as follows : 40, 35, 30, 25 and 
20 cents—30 and 25 cents per pound continuing for 
much the longest time. The fore-quarters (or should¬ 
ers, if the ribs are mostly taken off) weigh from four 
to eight pounds, and sell from 5 to 10 cents lower 
than the hind-quarters, with now and then a fore¬ 
quarter dropped to some one—a friend, a neighbor, or 
some family not rich enough to afford lamb often—at 
a less price when there is a surplus of fore-quarters. 
This last quite frequently occurs with my class of cus¬ 
tomers, with whom the price is a matter of less mo¬ 
ment than quality, and nearly all want hind-quarters. 
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