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in bone and muscle-forming elements, started them growing again 
and delayed for some weeks their marketing. 
The experiences of the past season have sliowm that, for lambs, it 
is probably best to feed wheat the first third of the winter, then half 
wheat and half corn for the next third, finishing off on clear corn. 
In feeding older sheep, corn is by far the best grain to use. 
The hay fed to sheep in Colorado is all alfalfa. It is fed in racks 
that are best about fourteen feet wide. These racks are simply low 
fences enclosing a space fourteen feet wide and any length desired. 
The fences are made of three 8-inch boards running lengthwise of 
the racks, the bottom one resting on the ground; the others above 
with 8-inch spaces, making a fence foity inches high. The hay is pitched 
into the middle by the wagon load, and pushed up to the sides two 
or three times per day as fast as the sheep need it. There should be 
rack enough so that most of the sheep can eat at the same time; this 
will require about one foot per head for lambs and fifteen inches 
per head for older sheep. 
The alfalfa in Colorado is all stacked, without cover, and con¬ 
sequently there is a large amount of poor hay on the top and bottom 
of the stacks. This is refused by the sheep, together with considerable 
of the coarser parts of the stalks. Practice varies greatly as to what 
is done with this refuse and as to how clean the sheep are required 
to eat the hay before fresh is given. 
Southern lambs are rather dainty feeders and it is estimated that, 
with a fair quality of hay, one-fifth of that given them is not eaten. 
With older sheep, and especially with large western wethers, not 
more than half as much is refused. The best feeders clean out the 
refuse from four to six times a month. It makes the best of horse 
hay and is excellent to winter colts and range cattle. Under present 
methods much of it is wasted. Hundreds of tons are thrown out of 
racks into the spaces between and tramped over by the sheep until in 
some corrals this mixed layer of hay and manure becomes more than 
a foot thick. From ten to fifteen two-year-old steers can be wintered 
on the refuse from a thousand sheep, and it would be still better for 
all concerned if the hay was cleaned out so often as to furnish feed 
for twenty head. In counting the cost of feeding sheep, this refuse 
is not considered, and all the hay taken from the stacks is charged 
against the sheep. 
Sheep do best with running water before them all the time. A 
large part of the feeding yards in Colorado are located on the banks 
of streams or near enough to rivers so that ditches can be run through 
the yards and the surplus water returned to the river. Those on high 
ground depend on windmills to pump the water into a tank from 
which it runs into the watering troughs. The troughs are furnished 
with float-valves that keep the water always at the same height. At 
night in cold weather the water is shut off by a valve below frost. A 
few feeders have done good work, though compelled to haul water 
