Herding.25 cents. 
Interest on Investment.12 “ 
Dipping. 2 
Shearing. 6 u 
Feeding. T 
52 cents. 
A common way of ranging sheep in southern Colorado is to let 
them out on shares. One man buys the sheep and turns them over 
to the charge and control of the shepherd, only stipulating that he 
shall receive a certain rental. If it is a mixed bunch of ewes, wethers,, 
and lambs, the renter pays taxes, furnishing rams, makes original 
number good, and gives the owner two pounds of wool per head per 
year, delivered in sacks at the railroad. When all the bunch are 
ewes, the owner receives one-lialf the lambs and one-half the wool, 
each party paying one-half the taxes. 
SELLING THE LAMBS. 
The common practice in raising sheep is to sell in the fall, the- 
wether lambs and part of the ewe lambs. Enough ewe lambs are re¬ 
tained to fill the places of the old ewes that are sold for mutton. On 
the average, there would be for each thousand breeding ewes in the 
flock, four hundred wether lambs to sell, together with one hundred 
ewe lambs and three hundred old ewes. For reasons to be given later,, 
such exact figures are seldom reached and the sales each year from 
each flock are made up of a various mixture of ewe and wether lambs, 
yearling and older wethers, barren ewes of all ages, and old ewes. 
Such a mixed lot would not feed well together for fattening and would 
have to be sorted out in marketing. The man who is feeding on a 
small scale and has to sell all his surplus to one buyer must expect to 
receive a low price. The large grower has here the advantage in that 
he can sort his sheep and still have enough of each kind to make a 
full lot. It is better to make up into lots of lambs, yearling wethers, 
older wethers, and old ewes. The wether lambs sell on the range the 
first of November for 65 cents to $1.10 and weigh forty to seventy 
pounds. These prices and weights refer to Colorado-grown Merinos. 
These lambs, if kept a year longer, would weigh from seventy to one 
hundred pounds and bring from $1.25 to $1.75 per head, or an in¬ 
creased price of about 75 cents per head. When sheared at one year 
old, they produce about 50 cents worth of wool, making $1.25 that 
the yearling brings more than the lamb. As the cost of ranging is 
about 75 cents per year, there is a larger net return per head in run¬ 
ning the sheep to the second year than in selling them as lambs. 1 ? ! 
the other hand, it requires that the owner keep his money invested 
one year longer before he gets any return. Or, putting it in another 
