IOOG. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
695 
CONDITIONS OF THE SHEEP INDUSTRY. 
Good Prospects for Wool and Mutton. 
The outlook for the sheep industry is the brightest 
that it has been for many years, and there is no visible 
reason why sheep should not stay at a good figure 
for many years in the future. The old law of “supply 
and demand” comes in play, and the supply is so 
limited that the demand cannot be met before a great 
many years have been spent in breeding along different 
lines than are followed at present. Sheep have been 
so high that a great number of the ewe lambs and 
old ewes have been put on the market, and the re¬ 
sult is that the number of females has been greatly 
reduced, while all the time the demand has been in¬ 
creasing. In England the same conditions are pres¬ 
ent. A great many of the farmers there will have a 
patch of stubble or late clover, and will buy a flock of 
ewes and breed them. In the Spr'ng they will get the 
ewes, lambs and all fat, and will market them. In 
the next season they will do the same thing, and the 
result is quite plain to be seen. Where there used to 
be a number of flocks within a short drive now you 
have to drive a good way to see very many flocks, 
especially in comparison with what there used to be. 
In Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand and South Af¬ 
rica the breeders report the same scarcity and high 
prices, and hard to get the sheep at any price. When 
such conditions are prevailing all over the world, how 
can there possibly be a glut of the market? Of 
course some few are reserving their ewe lambs, and 
they are right in doing so, but the number of these is 
very small in comparison with the number of sheep 
that are raised on the globe. Wool 
is a good price everywhere, and is 
much higher in. England than it 
was a year ago. The only rea¬ 
son is that the supply is less and 
the demand has increased. The 
world is wanting more mutton and 
more wool, but they are not getting 
it. It is the right time now for the 
breeders to have the best. The 
best will always command a higher 
price, and make the business more 
profitable. It is the breeder who 
starts in with a low class of sheep 
and then does not care for them 
who makes a failure of the sheep, 
and tells all his neighbors and 
scares them out of the notion of 
having a flock. Any farmer is per¬ 
fectly on the right side that will 
start now in sheep and start along 
the right lines. It is always good 
to learn by the experience of others 
but do not take the advice of a 
farmer that is not capable of giv¬ 
ing it. Some men are not good 
enough judges to make a success 
of anything, but because they do 
not succeed do not think that there 
is no money in sheep. There is 
no farm animal that there is more 
clear money in, and all the old 
breeders that have stayed with it 
through thick and thin will tell you 
that. The sheep is the money 
maker whether on low or high-priced land. On low- 
priced land they get all the weeds and small shrubs, 
and are very hardy, and come out and do well if left 
almost entirely alone. On high-priced land they have 
no equal. I hey make largest amount of gain for a 
given quantity of food consumed, and their droppings 
are by far the most valuable to the soil of all manures. 
They eat up all little patches of weeds, etc., and will 
eat most anything that grows. By test it is found that 
out of COO of the most common weeds sheep will eat 
576 of them. In England, where the rent of land is 
$15 to $20. you ask the farmer what makes him the 
most money and lie will say “sheep” every time, and it 
is so all over the island. The Tasmanians are run¬ 
ning sheep in large numbers on their highest as well 
as the low priced land because they are the most 
profitable. 
Every farmer should have a flock of sheep, and he 
need not worry lest the prices will not stay up. The 
supply throughout the world is so short that there is 
no reason to make shefep come down, and the people 
are bound to have enough mutton to eat and wool to 
wear. The thing for the farmer to do is to get a 
small flock of ewes at the lowest price he can, and then 
stay with them. It takes determination and persever¬ 
ance to make the greatest success of the sheep business. 
The beginner must be determined that he will succeed, 
and then stay right with it. Getting a start on right 
lines is half of the battle. It is best to get a good 
quality of ewes, and then be sure to use the very best 
pure-bred ram that you can get hold of. Do not use 
a scrub sire under any circumstances. They are money 
losers. They may look good at first, but their lambs do 
not prove to be good ones. They will be_a mixed lot, 
while if you had used a good sire they would have been 
an even lot and' woidd have commanded a higher 
price on the market, ft is the even lot from the best 
sires'that makes the most money in every instance, and 
they are also the best to have on the farm. A person 
always feels better if lie has a high-class lot of sheep 
than if he has the'culls of the country. When buying 
a ram it is well to look to his pedigree, and the longer 
you can trace it to good ancestors the better the ram 
is likely to breed. Some men say a pedigree is “bosh,” 
but we say not. The longer we are breeding good sheep 
with the purpose of making them better the more we 
learn about the fact that blood will tell, and it will 
tell every time. The old ewe with a crooked back 
will always raise a crooked-back lamb. The ram that 
has poor mutton form will always breed lambs that are 
the same way. The best way to do is to be careful in 
the selection of the ewes, and then always use a good 
sire. Reserve the best ewe lambs and sell out all the 
ewes that did not prove to be good breeders, and you 
will soon have a good flock. When you have a bunch 
of ewes, and are contemplating buying a ram to use 
on them, it would be well to study the ewe flock care¬ 
fully, and see what their greatest faults are, and then 
get a ram that is as good as possible in these weak 
points. Tf your ewes are small and do not shear 
enough it would be well to get a large strong ram with 
a heavy fleece. We are all breeding for all the good 
mutton we can get and then a good fleece that will 
weigh out well afterwards. 
Mutton is the most profitable if you have the right 
quality, and then the wool can receive as much atten- 
A BARNYARD BUNCH OF LAMBS. Fig. 295. 
tion as possible, and with a few years of careful breed¬ 
ing it is quite possible to have both combined in a very 
profitable way. The Shropshire is now a breed that 
combines the two in an excellent way; it yields a heavy 
fleece and also brings out the very best of mutton. 
There are several advantages in a dense fleece of good 
length. One is that the sheep are protected from all 
storms, and specially is this true if sheep are well 
wooled on the belly. The day for a bare-bellied sheep 
is over, and vv-e must guard carefully against it, and 
see that every sheep has a good covering of wool. 
Strong constitution is one of the most important fea¬ 
tures about a sheep. A sheep with a strong constitu¬ 
tion is the best for every purpose, whether they 
are being kept for the breeding pen or for the feed lot. 
I he weak sheep is no good anywhere in comparison 
with the sheep with the wide chest and the large heart 
girth. 'J'he sheep that is small around the heart has not 
much room for his digestive organs to do their proper 
duty, and when that is not done the sheep is at a great 
loss. It is a good time for anyone to get a flock of sheep, 
and it is a good time for the old breeder to be keeping 
his best. The thing for the beginner to do is to learn 
all he can about sheep from the successful breeders 
whom he may be near to and apply this knowledge to 
the best advantage that he can. Anyone can succeed 
with sheep, that will try, but they do not want too 
much attention. Some men think that they need to 
be watched like a baby, but that is a great mistake. 
They are better if they are let run and rather care for 
themselves. Get a flock of good ones and see that they 
are on reasonably good pasture. When Winter 
comes give them a little grain, and the sheep will prove 
profitable; in years to come you will wonder why you 
were not in the sheep business at an earlier date. No 
farm animal responds more readily to good care. 
Iowa. CHANDLER BROS. 
THE HIRED MAN PROBLEM. 
Married Men Are Needed. 
It seems all are agreed that the present conditions 
are unsatisfactory. Now we have arrived at a con¬ 
dition that is unsatisfactory, what is the cause of it? 
Many will answer the saloon. But how comes it that 
the saloon has had so much worse effect on the hired 
man than on the farmer? Is he inherently worse or 
has his environment made him worse, if indeed he be 
worse? One thing that has helped to steady the 
farmer, that as a rule is lacking in the hired man, is 
the responsibility of a family. Men without families 
have been preferred as farm laborers for a long time. 
There has been almost a rule that farm laborers board 
at the farm. Men without anything to hold them 
to a steady habitation are wanted in the great grain 
fields of the West at present, there being not the 
slightest accommodation for families. This surely 
brings around a crowd without the restraint which 
a family holds on men. The logging camps of this 
State also are in the same way doing no small share 
towards the destruction of the morals of the young 
men. Liberty is seemingly the ideal state to which 
Americans are turning their feet. The farm laborer 
desires to be free from the responsibility of a family 
The farmer likewise desires a laborer who has no such 
responsibility, and has obtained such at the cost, how¬ 
ever, of reliability, and now he docs 
not like the product. Cash pay¬ 
ment of wages has been no small 
factor in development of a shift¬ 
less character. Nature does not 
pay cash. “The husbandman wait- 
eth for the precious fruit of the 
earth, and hath long patience for 
it.” This waiting for a crop to 
mature before buying a new buggy 
or new suit, helps to develop a re¬ 
liable character that is» unfortu¬ 
nately lost on the wage earner, and 
in no small degree has contributed 
to the restless character of the 
workers of the present time. If 
conditions are ever to become per¬ 
manently better for the farmer it 
must be that the farm be made so 
that men will be able to marry and 
live on the farm with their families 
in as much comfort as the carpen¬ 
ters or blacksmith in the village or 
town. 
About the high wages com¬ 
plained of, does not the laborer of 
to-day by the use of machinery, 
produce very much more than he 
could 40 years ago? Farm lands 
appreciate in value with the good 
roads, trolley lines, etc., all created 
by the labor of laborers. Why 
should not the laborer have good 
wages? The only trouble is they 
are not spent as wisely as they 
ought to be. The matter is serious and cannot be 
solved by importing Japanese or Chinamen. It may or 
may not help land-owners for a little while, but they 
have sown the wind and sooner or later the whirlwind 
must be reaped, whether by them or their children I 
know not. t. r. hopkins. 
Washington. _ 
HANDLING THE CORN CROP. 
This is how we do it. As we pay $200 yearly for six 
acres, it has to make a big return for our dollars, and 
rotation of crops will not bring them. Put on a large 
amount of cow manure (soil sandy loam), plow late 
April, harrow until as fine as a garden, then plant about 
May 15 to 20, two or three grains IS inches apart, rows 
30 inches apart; 300 pounds high-grade fertilizer per 
acre. Work as long as we can, let it commence to 
glaze, provided King Frost does not catch it; harvest 
with a harvester, get to a pneumatic blower cutter and 
into the silo. Feed it out from the start as long as it 
lasts, and it makes as high-testing milk as pure Jer¬ 
seys will produce, and we get nine cents a quart for 
it. The farmers around us cut their corn in the old- 
fashioned way, shock it, then husk; lose a large amount 
of practically worthless fodder, and then “cuss” be¬ 
cause there is a lot of stalks in the manure in the 
Spring to get out and plow under. But, a few miles 
away, there are a number of milk producers, who have 
silos and put their corn in and are making money. One 
has registered Jerseys and his returns in 1905 were 
13,700 gallons of milk shipped, calves vealed $48.74, 
five heifer calves raised; total average 23 cows, and 
average per cow $106.08. r. f. shannon. 
Pennsylvania. 
