30 
RAISING EARLY LAMBS. 
pounds of hay per head per day and decreased to about four 
pounds when a pound of grain was added. The lambs ate 
a pound of hay and a pound of grain after they were 30 days 
old until they were sold. This makes 85 pounds of grain 
for each ewe and 25 pounds of grain for each lamb, or no 
pounds of grain for the ewe and lamb, costing us on an av¬ 
erage 64 cents. 
ITU Each ewe ate 715 pounds of hay and the lamb 25 pounds 
or 740 pounds of hay, which at $3.00 per ton comes to $1.11 
or a total cost for winter feed of $1.75. Subtracting this 
from the income of $3.96 leaves $2.21 as the return for the 
•summer feed of the ewes and the labor of caring for the 
sheep and lambs through the winter. 
These returns compare very favorably with any that can 
be obtained from running sheep on the range. They repre¬ 
sent a clear profit of at least forty per cent, on the invest¬ 
ment. Indeed so profitable is the business that if one was 
sure of a market at the above prices there would be thous¬ 
ands and tens of thousands of early lambs raised each year 
in Colorado. But, as stated at the beginningof this article, 
the local market that pays these prices is quite limited and 
will buy only the very best of stock. There is money in the 
business for a few breeders near each of the larger cities, 
but if many went into the business they would break the 
market and themselves. 
RAISING EARLY LAMBS IN THE ARKANSAS 
VALLEY. 
The Arkansas Valley in Colorado is naturally tributary 
to Kansas City. There are more early lambs raised in the 
Arkansas Valley than in all the rest of the state together 
and most of these lambs are marketed in Kansas City, 
though a few are sent west to Pueblo and Colorado Springs. 
The following quotations will give an idea of how the 
business is carried on and what returns are expected. It 
can be said as a preface to what follows that the early lamb 
business in the Arkansas Valley is founded almost entirely 
on the aged ewe. The old ewes that are too weak or have 
too poor teeth to stand another year on the range, are 
brought to the farm in the fall, bred to drop their lambs 
•early, are fed heavily during the winter and spring so that 
by early summer they are in excellent condition for mutton 
and bring considerably more than could have been gotten 
for them fresh from the range the preceding fall. Thus 
there are two sources of income, the return from the lamb 
and the increased value of the ewe. 
