24 
THE SHEEP. 
THE CHEVIOT BREED. 
The wool of this breed weighs about three and a half pounds the fleece. It formerly used to be employed for the making of 
cloths; but from the extensive employment of the merino wool of Saxony and Spain, it is now scarcely employed for this pur¬ 
pose, and is prepared by the process of combing in place of carding, for the coarser manufactures. The attention of breeders, 
too, having been mainly directed to the fattening properties of the animal, the wool has diminished in fineness, though it has 
increased in length and weight. Its quality varies somewhat with the pastures, being finer where the shorter grasses prevail, 
and coarser where the herbage is rough and heathy. 
The management of the Cheviot resembles that of the Black-faced Heath Sheep; but as, for the most part, they occupy a 
lower range of mountains, better means exist of supplying them with food during the inclement season of winter. 
They are suffered to range over the grounds assigned to them, and their artificial food is only subsidiary to the natural 
herbage of the farm. It is supplied chiefly during falls of snow, and consists either of the hay of the cultivated grasses or clovers, 
where this can be obtained, or is the produce of the swamps and perennial meadows of the farm. When turnips can be produced, 
these likewise are supplied at the fitting times. The breeder of these Sheep, as in the case of the Black-faced Heath Breed, is not 
necessarily the person who feeds them for ultimate use. He rears them to a certain age, and then transfers them to those whose 
farms enable them to bring them to the required maturity. This constitutes the great traffic between the farmers of the higher 
and lower country, and is a fitting division of labour and employment. Sometimes, indeed, the breeder of these Sheep, by pos¬ 
sessing low and cultivated ground, or otherwise, is enabled to combine the practices of rearing and fattening, but the essential 
destination of the higher farms is the rearing and not the fattening of stock; and the two occupations, though they may be com¬ 
bined, are essentially distinct. The stock often passes through several intervening graziers and feeders, before it is fattened 
for ultimate use. In general, the Cheviot Sheep are fattened at an earlier age than the Black-faced Heath Sheep, partly on 
account of the greater precocity of the animals, but chiefly on account of the superior treatment which they receive when young. 
The Cheviot breeder may sell his Sheep in the first year when hoggets, but very generally in the second year, either when they 
retain their fleece and are still hoggets, or after they are divested of their fleece, and are shearlings, or, in the language of the 
northern farmer, dinmonts and gimmers. They are rarely fattened when shearlings; the usual period is after they have lost 
their second fleece, and are wethers. The ewes, after having borne lambs for several years, generally three, are sold, and their 
place supplied by the younger females reared on the farm, which at that time are in the autumn of their second year, and about 
nineteen months old. 
The rams are usually admitted to the ewes about the 20th of November, so that the season of lambing may commence in 
the early part of April. One ram is assigned to sixty ewes. 
The ewes, during the period of gestation, feed on the natural pastures of the farm, but on the falling of heavy snows receive 
a supply of hay, which may be spread upon the surface. But the Sheep have a wonderful faculty of collecting their food, even 
when all the ground is covered, by scraping away the snow with their feet, and they prefer this natural food to the dried pro- 
vender. When turnips as well as hay are produced, the ewes may receive them likewise during falls of snow, but it is especially 
at the period of lambing, and during its continuance, that this species of food is supplied. 
When the period of lambing arrives, all the vigilance of the shepherds is required. Sometimes the ewes are so enfeebled by 
want of food and the inclemency of the weather, that they have not milk sufficient to nourish their young, and then the maternal 
feeling seems to become extinct. But this latter accident is of partial occurrence, and it is rare that the mothers altogether 
abandon their young. Sometimes the lambs at their birth are so weak that they cannot rise from the ground, and thus perish. 
In such cases the shepherd is at hand to assist the young to the teat, and often he takes the ewe with her young to a place of 
shelter, where they can be more carefully tended. When a ewe dies, and it is wished to give her lamb to one that has lost her 
own young, or when a ewe has twins, and it is wished to give one of them to be suckled by another whose own lamb has perished, 
some art is often required to induce the ewe to adopt the stranger. The most common method is to confine them together to a 
narrow dark space, holding the lamb to the teat until it has been suckled. In certain cases, when the lamb of any ewe has 
perished, its skin is taken off and put on the lamb to be adopted. The ewe, deceived by the smell of her own offspring, suffers 
herself to be sucked, and from that time forward adopts the little orphan, and treats it with all the kindness of the natural parent. 
It is of painful interest to see a ewe whose lamb has perished mourning over its little one, and refusing to leave it or be comforted. 
If the dead body is dragged along the ground, the poor mother will follow it even into the cot of the shepherd, fiercely driving away 
the dogs or sheep that approach it. Even when the ewes themselves are in the agonies of death, they will be seen calling piteously 
to their young ones, and offering them the last store of milk with which Nature has furnished them. When the ewes have twins, 
and thus have two lambs to nurse, it is well to give them a more liberal supply of food. It is convenient to have an enclosure 
of early grass near the place of lambing or the shepherd’s cottage, to which ewes with twins, such as have too little milk, and 
