American Agriculturist 
THE FARM PAPER THAT PRINTS THE FARM NEWS 
“ Agriculture is the Most Healthful, Most Useful and Most Noble Employment of Man ”—Washington 
. ' ■ Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. Established 1842 
Volume 112 
For the Week Ending November 24, 1923 
Number 21 
The Outlook For Eastern Sheep Men 
In Addition to Wool, the East Can Compete in the Lamb Market 
By MARK J. SMITH 
due to the influence of the world-wide 
scarcity. 
Wool is a war-time necessity so that dur¬ 
ing the World War the demand for it greatly 
increased with resultant high-level of prices. 
After hostilities ceased, wool continued 
strong for a time. Then the demoralization 
came due to conditions that had practically 
nothing to do with world-wool supplies, but 
rather with accumulations in countries of 
origin, due to shipping congestion and other 
accumulations made by warring nations look¬ 
ing forward to a war of uncertain length. 
We must also bear in mind that central Eu¬ 
rope was practically out of the wool market 
T HE statement has been made that the 
standard stereotyped sheep article be¬ 
gins with a howl, contains a presenta¬ 
tion of statistics and concludes with a 
prophecy. All of which is true to a greater 
or less degree and logically so. The sheep 
industry has always experienced cycles of a 
rather pronounced form and until such time 
when human nature undergoes a very radi¬ 
cal change this will continue to go on. 
In the fall of 1920 and following winter 
when sheep owners were making a scramble 
to get rid of their ewes at almost any price 
and the interest in sheep was at the lowest 
ebb that it has been at any time since the 
war, an old-time sheepman writing in one of 
our farm papers made the suggestion that 
there was a possibility of 
ewe lambs born that spring, 
bringing $15 a head before 
they died of old age—further¬ 
more this man was willing to 
back up his prophecy by 
betting a cheap hat on it. In 
justice to our far-seeing 
friend I think it should be 
said that I have before me 
now a report of a sale of 140 
head of two-year-old western 
ewes that recently sold to a 
Dansville party at $15 per 
head. 
When sheep are high farm¬ 
ers want them—when they 
are low many of them want 
to get out. The eastern sheep 
owner is not a sheepman in 
the same sense as is our west¬ 
ern brothers—here the farm 
flocks are usually sidelines to 
the farming business and 
while it is not generally re¬ 
alized one-third of the sheep 
kept in New York State are owned in six at that time. This last fact is significant in 
of the best farming counties of Western New view of the fact* that Germany in 1922, is re- 
York where land is high in price, but where ported, to have bought from other countries 
large amounts of feed are raised and the over 400,000,000 pounds of wool—a consid- 
roughage fed. Hence the flocks are large, erable factor in the wool trade. 
However, take it in the Adirondack As soon as trade conditions again became 
section of the State where the flocks are more normal, wool advanced inevitably due 
small and the farm business usually smaller to the conditions of supply and demand 
“The eastern sheep owner is not a sheepman in the same sense as 
brothers—here the farm flocks are usually sidelines to the farming’ 
—here the sheep play relatively as large a 
part in the farming scheme as in more 
level sections. 
Eastern Sheep Business on Sound Basis 
In this article I shall omit the aforemen¬ 
tioned howl and shall not assume the role of 
a prophet, but shall present some facts and 
give the readers of the American Agricul¬ 
turist the benefit of my experience and con¬ 
tact with the sheepmen of four States. My 
purpose will be to substantiate the thought 
that “Eastern farm flock husbandry is on a 
sound and substantial basis/’ 
There is to-day a world-wide shortage of 
sheep and wool—for some years before the 
late war the demand for wool had caught up 
with the supply. In 1914, in spite of wool 
being on the free list under Schedule K, wool 
increased in price over the preceding year 
It may, at first thought, seem out of place 
to talk so much of wool when discussing the 
prospects for eastern farm flock husbandry. 
It is true that the lamb is the big end of the 
sheep industry in all sections at this time, 
but the nature of wool—its method of sale 
and handling gives us a check on the trend 
of the sheep population. We are a wool¬ 
importing nation—importing practically half 
of our consumption—producing a tenth and 
using a fifth of the world’s wool. 
Shoddy Replaces Wool Shortage 
There is not enough wool in the world to 
make a pound of cloth for each person or 
only a piece of cloth a little over a yard square. 
Shoddy or reworked wool fills in the gap. 
Someone has said that reworked wool makes 
up the difference between that which “A 
Tahitian wears in his Upa Upa dance and 
that of the average conservative New Eng¬ 
lander.” 
Sheep have always been the fore-runners 
of civilization inhabiting the frontiers. In 
the early days when the West was being 
opened up and the vast amount of free range 
was thrown open to sheep grazing the East 
could not compete and our sheep population 
fell off by leaps and bounds—just one illus¬ 
tration is that of Dutchess County in New 
York State. It seems almost incomprehensi¬ 
ble that in 1835 Dutchess County had 234,- 
294 sheep and there were twenty counties 
with over 100,000 head. Dutchess County 
does not possess 10,000 sheep to-day. 
To-day in the United States, we really 
have no frontier. Nearly three-quarters of 
the sheep in the United States 
are kept in the Rocky Moun¬ 
tain States. In recent years, 
the numbers have declined 
and with the cutting up of 
the ranges by homesteads,, 
dry-farming, irrigation and 
so on they will continue to 
decline. We are in a new 
era. In the days gone by 
sheep were raised in the West 
for wool alone. With the in¬ 
creasing of our national pop¬ 
ulation, development of cities, 
improvement of transporta¬ 
tion and refrigeration as well 
as increased costs of running 
ewes in the West, the western 
ewes were crossed with rams 
that would give them more 
value from the carcass stand¬ 
point. 
This practice has been in 
effect, not only in the United 
States, but also in such im¬ 
portant sheep countries as 
New Zealand and Australia. 
Coincident with this change has come in¬ 
creased costs. The old Merino western 
ewe virtually looked out for herself, but 
modern western sheep raising calls for more 
fences, deeded land, modern shed-lambing 
and more shepherding in general. These 
items have all added to the cost. 
East Can Compete for Market Lamb Trade 
The point that I have been coming to is 
this—to-day, the East can-compete with the 
West in the production of market lambs. 
A prominent Wyoming sheepman states that 
it now costs $5 to run a sheep a year in their 
State. Thus it can be readily seen that under 
our eastern farm-flock conditions where we 
have more of the production factors under 
control, where our lambing percentages are 
higher and where much roughage of an in¬ 
expensive byproduct nature is consumed that 
our small farm flocks are relatively more 
profitable than is the case in the West. 
Profit is the golden beacon that guides the 
course of the man who is planning to get 
ahead and to-day we are hearing large grain 
farmers say that they have been following 
- (Continued on 'page 359) 
is our western 
business. . . 
Jm 1 
