Vol. LXX. No. 4103. 
NEW YORK, JUNE 17, 1911. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR 
EARLY LAMBS IN NEW YORK. 
Success with Tunis Sheep. 
I am indebted to The R. N.-Y., indirectly perhaps, 
for much of my success in the sheep business. I 
would not, however, be understood as posing as an 
expert in the sheep business. I have profited by Mi 
Van Alstyne’s articles that have appeared in The 
R. N.-Y. from time to time, as well as by a lecture 
I heard him deliver at a farmers’ institute a number 
of years ago. One remark in particular in that lec¬ 
ture has influenced me more in the care and feeding 
of sheep than anything else. It is this: “Teach your 
lambs to walk before they are born.” This I have 
kept constantly in mind in the treatment of breeding 
ewes. The idea was to care for and feed the ewes 
so as best to promote the growth and development of 
the lambs from the time of conception, and to this 
end I find it is best to keep the ewes in good thrifty 
condition at all times. The method of handling sheep 
is changing in this part of the State, though some still 
cling to the old way of our fathers of wintering the 
breeding ewes as cheaply as possible on any roughage 
that happened to be at hand. Straw and bean fodder 
is very largely the bill of fare in this section. They 
are very fond of bean fodder, and it is an excellent 
food fed in connection with nice clover or Alfalfa. 
From my experience I would ad¬ 
vise feeding but once each day of 
the bean fodder to breeding ewes. 
Alfalfa is coming to the rescue of 
the sheep on many of our farms, 
as it can be started with little 
difficulty, and gives an abundance 
of the very best feed, producing 
three to six tons per acre. In my 
opinion it will be but a few years 
when it will be rare to find a 
farm in western New York with¬ 
out a few acres at least of Alfalfa, 
which comes the nearest of any¬ 
thing we have yet found to a 
grass food. 
Now as to how I handle sheep. 
I will first tell what I am breed¬ 
ing and feeding for. My object 
has been to get early Winter 
lambs to supply the city markets 
with 'a food that none but the 
wealthy can afford to eat. To do 
this we endeavor to winter our 
yearlings as well as the older 
ewes so that they come out in 
good thrifty order when they go 
to grass, keep them in good pas¬ 
ture all through the Summer. A 
change of pasture is best where 
they can get a variety of grass. 
Should it come a very dry time, 
as it often does sometimes during 
the Summer, we have our Alfalfa 
fields, some of which we can pas¬ 
ture after the first or second cut¬ 
ting, or we may have a field of 
rape for such an emergency. In 
the Fall when the grass becomes 
frost-bitten we take the sheep in 
at night and feed them some 
clover or Alfalfa and a little 
grain, and when taken in for the 
V' inter shear them, which necessitates their being 
kept quite closely confined in our warm basements 
with not much exercise, especially in stormy or 
cold weather. To counteract the influence of this 
confinement we find the liberal feeding of Alfalfa a 
great help, also oil meal and bran. We used to feed 
largely of roots, but since the advent of Alfalfa we 
raise less roots (mangel wurzels mostly) and feed 
A YEARLING TUNIS RAM. Fig. 239. 
them only after lambing. We then increase their 
grain ration according to their needs, adding some 
good cull beans (when we can get them at a reason¬ 
able price), corn or barley, or both, and oats. When 
the lambs are about two weeks old we provide feed¬ 
ing rooms where they may creep through, and keep 
constantly before them plenty of nice green clover 
or Alfalfa hay, taking out what they leave every day, 
and give it to the ewes or other stock; for grain we 
start them largely with bran and oil meal and ground 
oats, soon adding ground barley and corn, and when 
four to five weeks old feed in separate feed troughs 
whole oats, barley, corn and sometimes beans. The 
whole grain we run through the fanning mill to get 
all dust and stems out. We sprinkle granulated sugar 
over the ground feed in the troughs, and we have 
found when the lambs get near the finishing age, 
eight to 12 weeks old, that a little molasses on the 
corn will induce them to eat more of it. We fill a 
pail or bucket about two-thirds full of corn and pour 
in a little molasses and stir it with a stick until 
every kernel is coated slightly. We do not feed the 
lambs roots, as we have better success by feeding the 
roots to the mothers. With this method of feeding 
we have comparatively little bowel trouble among 
either ewes or lambs. Plenty of good water is al¬ 
ways before them where the lambs as well as the 
mothers can drink at will, and it is surprising how 
often they will run to the fountain, especially when 
eating their fodder. Alfalfa, clover hay and bean 
pods is our fooder for sheep. We usually have enough 
of the latter to give them one feed per day, if not, 
then a feed every other day. For litter we use the 
waste of the bean fodder and straw; they will get 
quite a little picking out of the straw, which we 
usually scatter about mid-day. We do not feed the 
older sheep any more hay or bean fodder than they 
will eat up clean. Of course the 
pods are about all that is eatable 
of the bean fodder; most of the 
vine and stalk is good only for 
litter. 
As to the breed, I will say that 
for our purpose we prefer the 
Tunis, because we can get the 
lambs much fatter and ready for 
market much younger than any 
we have tried. We have dressed 
and shipped cross-bred Tunis 
lambs at seven to ten weeks old 
that have brought prices above 
the highest quotations on the New 
York market. About 10 years ago 
I read an article in The R. N.-Y. 
by Mr. Clark Allis, of Orleans 
Co., in which he gave his experi¬ 
ence in crossing the Tunis ram 
with his grade ewes. This wa£ 
the first we had ever heard of 
the breed, and as we were not 
quite satisfied with the results we 
were getting with the Shropshire, 
concluded when we changed rams 
again to try a Tunis. We used 
our Shropshire ram two years 
more, as • lie was an excellent 
stock getter, and then began to 
look for a Tunis. We had some 
difficulty in finding one, but finally 
found a man in Indiana who 
would sell us one and had him 
sent by exprsss to our station. 
Having ‘ never seen a Tunis we 
were somewhat disappointed in 
the ram when he arrived; he was 
considerably smaller than our 
Shropshire, rather light wooled 
and not particularly handsome. 
However, we said nothing, de¬ 
termined to give him a fair trial, 
but hadn’t enough confidence in him to give him but 
about one-fourth of our ewes the first season. The 
result was that the lambs from the Tunis ram were 
ready for market much sooner than the others, and 
TUNIS EWES, TEN TO THIRTEEN MONTHS OLD. Fig. 240. 
A BUNCH OF AGED TUNIS EWES. Fig. 241. 
