American Agriculturist, iviay iv, 
The “Old Shepherd” of Allegany County 
What Harley Sherman Learned In a Lifetime With Sheep 
Harley P. Sherman. 
By MARK J. SMITH 
than everything else put together, dogs and all.” 
He states that in his over fifty years’ experience 
his total losses from dogs in excess of what the 
town has paid him, as damages, will not amount 
to $25.00. 
When Mr. Sherman puts in his sheep hay he 
says he wants it to heat somewhat in the mow. 
It is his custom to sprinkle about four quarts of 
salt to the ton as the hay goes' in the mow. 
The sheep are fed cull beans in the morning and 
turnips are fed once a day with the various kinds 
of roughage; cornfodder, oat chaff, even unthreshed 
buckwTieat, has been found to be good feed. Corn 
stalks are fed in the fields on the snow if possible— 
State corn is raised, the stalks are bound in small 
bundles and placed in the hay barns. Mr. 
Sherman likes to feed them once a day in the 
winter as it serves to give the ewes the much 
needed exercise. 
Turnips occupy a prominent place in Mr. 
Sherman’s scheme of sheep farming. He says 
they are his main feed and he believes that he can 
raise rutabaga turnips for five cents per bushel. 
T RUE to the general rule, that the majority 
of our best sheepmen are those who 
became interested in sheep when they 
were boys—Harley P. Sherman, when a 
boy of seven years, was presented with an old 
fine wool ewe as a gift from his uncle. The boy 
kept his solitary sheep in the smokehouse and 
thus was begun his long and successful sheep¬ 
raising career that has continued unbrokenly for 
nearly sixty years. 
Mr. Sherman, who has be¬ 
come well known throughout 
the State of New York as an 
outstanding sheepman and as 
one who knows how to profit¬ 
ably convert the products of 
. t wo York State farms into 
3 L lamb and wool, has spent his 
entire life on the farm where 
he was born. It is an inter¬ 
esting fact that Mr. Sherman’s 
father, Clark Sherman, came 
to this farm in March, 1849. 
The farm was taken up in 1808 and has changed 
hands but twice. Mr. Sherman says that he 
! inherited, his love for sheep from 
S his maternal grandfather, who 
kept a thousand or more head. 
Nearly every phase of the sheep 
business has been included in his 
long career of association with the 
“ Golden Hoof.” He has dealt in 
, sheep and when he kept cows and 
could not run a large number of 
sheep, he bred Shropshires—then 
rheumatism began to affect his 
hands so that he could not milk. 
He had no boy and had to hire his 
help, but he did not want to leave 
the old farm, so he decided to put 
on all sheep to eat the roughage 
produced on his land. Therefore 
it was decided to put on what fine 
wool sheep the farms would carry. 
His reasons for selecting finewools 
were that they are the hardiest, the 
best and easiest to fence against, 
will stand more timothy hay as it 
was impossible to have all clover, 
and that the lambs will get as large 
as the markets want before the 
pasturing season is over. In fact Long association with the Golden Hoof has an elevating effect upon human character. 
he feels that where fifty or more 
breeding ewes are kept together there should be 
some Merino blood in them, for, as he says, they 
winter so much better. 
In commenting to Mr. Sherman on the com¬ 
paratively small number of sheep kept in this 
State, I said to him, “Don’t you think the main 
reason for there not being more sheep is largely 
because of the scarcity of sheepmen?” He 
replied, “The reason we have no more sheepmen 
is that there are but a few men left who can teach 
the young boys—hundreds of young men have 
been here to my farm to see how I handle sheep. 
An instructor came here and wanted me to show 
the students how to make a wether sheep.” 
Mr. Sherman said, “Why, Mark, I could do this 
when I was ten years old.” In forty years’ 
experience with hired men he states that he has 
had but one good shepherd. 
In view of these facts would it not be over¬ 
looking an opportunity if we did not attempt to 
gather, before it is too late, from this large, fine 
old character some of the crystallized knowledge 
that he has gleaned in his experience of over half 
a century in sheep husbandry? Like all men who 
really know something he feels that what he does 
not know about sheep is much greater than what 
he does know. No sheepman was ever more 
willing and anxious to help the younger generation 
than Harley Sherman. 
Mr. Sherman’s broad experience brings out 
many important facts; for instance, he says, 
“I think the stomach worm has killed more sheep 
If you want your sheep to develop into large 
individuals, the experience of this old master 
shepherd is that you must grow them the first 
year of their lives. He finds that it pays to feed 
a little grain to his lambs at weaning time as well 
as later on through the wdnter. The method of 
drying up ewes used on this farm so that there wall 
be no bad udders the following spring is to put the 
ewes on hay as soon as the lambs are weaned, 
keep them there four days and milk them out on 
the last day. There have been times w r hen there 
was trouble from having still-born lambs when 
the right ration was not fed or the ewes did not 
receive sufficient exercise. 
To me one of the most interesting facts is 
Mr. Sherman’s definite knowledge regarding the 
income per head that his sheep have brought in 
over a period of time as long as fourteen years— 
he knows that his sheep, during this period, have 
averaged him an income per head of between 
eight and nine dollars per year. Last summer he 
did not have his sheep yarded but twice. 
“Just think,” he says, “ten cents or more for 
every pound of lamb you can grow—with 
what other stock can you do that and save 
the labor, and labor is the item 
that costs nowadays.” 
* * * 
ABOUT ten years ago it was 
il my privilege to attend a 
live-stock*banquet held at Cham¬ 
paign, Illinois. I have attended 
many inspirational meetings, 
the main purposes of which have 
been to glorify the stockman’s 
profession and to emphasize the 
phases of the live-stock business in 
addition to the dollars and cents 
side, but this meeting has always 
stood out very vividly in my mind. 
The response to toasts made by 
three of the men present have 
stayed by me. William Hislop from 
the State of Washington closed his 
excellent remarks with a quot ation 
from “The Ballad of East and 
West,” by Kipling: 
“But there is neither East nor West, 
Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, 
When two strong men stand face 
to face, though they come from 
the ends of the earth.” 
His method of feeding is to cut them in a root Herbert W. Mumford, always a true stock- 
cutter, put a little oil meal on them and feed them man, when called upon, stated that he had 
to the sheep in flat-bottom troughs so that the been very busy and would ask to be allowed 
sheep that eat rapidly will not get the feed away to read what he had jotted down as his response, 
from the slow eaters. Here is an idea that w r as He then read his “Tribute to the Stockman,” 
new to me—he wants each fifty ewes to have four 
quarts of dirt every day and they will get it on one 
bushel of turnips. He finds that they do better 
for having it. His favorite mixture to keep 
before sheep all the time, in connection 
w r ith salt, is equal parts of salt, sulphur and 
charcoal. 
Many men do not keep sheep because they say 
the conclusion of which is: 
“Herdsman, shepherd, groom—yes, and more. Broad¬ 
minded, big-hearted, whole-souled; whose life and character 
linger long after the cordial greeting is stilled and the hearty 
handshake is but a memory; whose silent influence forever 
lives. May his kind multiply and replenish the earth.” 
I later wrote Air. Mumford asking if I could 
they are not fenced for them and they do not secure a copy of the tribute in order that I might 
wish to make the necessary outlay of money, have it framed and I learned that the tribute had 
Other men ■who are running sheep on their land touched a responsive chord in the hearts and 
consider a few hundred rods of woven wire fencing minds of stockmen throughout the country, the 
as part of their equipment which to them is result being that Air. Alumford had the tribute 
movable, and they shift it as the need arises, copyrighted and made up in suitable form for 
Air. Sherman says: “I keep a lot of American framing. 
steel posts, some woven wire, and when I want to Among the guests at the banquet were some 
clean up a field I drive the posts, hook the wire prominent men not associated with the live-stock 
on and turn the sheep in—it saves so much labor industry. One of these vras Dean David Kinley, 
and cleans up the farm.” When he wants to an Economist by profession, who later was made 
make a permanent pasture fence he uses the same President of the University of Illinois. Toward 
kind of post, but instead of merely hooking the the close of the evening, Dean Kinley was called 
wire over the hooks on the posts he then drives upon. Apparently he had been somewhat im- 
the hooks down and places a barb-wire on top. pressed by the breadth and scope of the subject 
His experience shows that it is not best to buy matter included in the talks by the various live- 
woven wire fencing with the stay wires too close stock men. Dean Kinley rose and began his 
together, as the sheep in that case will get their remarks something like this: I note that you 
heads fast. (Continued on page 1 + 81 ) 
