tf 2 
PASTURING SHEEP ON ALFALEA. 
\ 
until grass was dry and then put them on again. By noon I 
had lost nine head. 
This spring I have kept the ewes up, fed them hay and 
let the lambs run through the fence and graze the alfalfa. 
They have done fairly well, but I believe if they and the 
ewes had other green grass and plenty of it as they do on 
alfalfa, that they would do better than on alfalfa. I have 
noticed one thing, that these lambs will leave the green 
alfalfa for dry hay and for a patch of wild grass. Still I 
have good lambs; some few January and February lambs 
weighed the middle of June 80 to 90 pounds. 
All my sheep were turned on the range in June and I 
will bring them back the middle of August. Lambs dropped 
in April and fed as above ought to weigh 70 pounds the 
first of September. 
My experience with pasturing sheep on alfalfa for six 
years has cost me several hundred dollars on account of 
bloat and that, too, with only a small bunch of 300 to 500 
ewes. 
I do not think I shall ever graze sheep on it again. The 
sooner the farmer who wants to graze his breeding stock on 
green feed gets something in place of alfalfa the better off 
he will be. People who have been buying old ewes at 75 
cents to $1.00 per head and putting them on alfalfa have 
not lost much money if they lose ten per cent, of their 
ewes. But where the ewes are worth four to six dollars 
per head the case is quite different. 
But although pasturing alfalfa has not been a success 
yet the sheep business, as a whole, has been profitable. 
This Arkansas Valley is a wonderful place for sheep. Our 
1898 account stands as follows : 
We had 35 lambs dropped in February and about 250 
dropped in April and May. They went to the range June 
10 and came back early in August. We commenced feed¬ 
ing bran and oats August 15 and got them on to full feed 
about the last of September, by which time they were eat¬ 
ing one and three-fourths pounds of shelled corn per head 
per day. The latter part of October we sold 50 picked 
ram lambs at $10 per head. Fifteen of these came in Feb¬ 
ruary and the rest in April. Their average age was about 
seven months and they weighed 99 pounds per head. Dur¬ 
ing November we sold 20 more ram lambs for $10 each. In 
December sold 40 ram lambs for $5 each. This left us 18 
cull ram lambs. These 18 with 118 ewe lambs we took to 
Kansas City the last of December and after an extra hard 
trip they weighed 81 pounds and sold for $5.40 per hun- 
