LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 AGRICULTURAL 
 
 SE 
 SF 
 375 
 
DATE DUE 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CARD 
 
SHEEP 
 
 THEIR BREEDING AND 
 MANAGEMENT 
 
SHEET 
 
 Their Breeding and 
 Manageme nt 
 
 BY 
 
 A. R. J^NN^R-FUST 
 
 Q UEB E C 
 DussAULT & Proulx, Printers 
 
 1 901 
 
 v'^ 
 
14-3 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 T>EFORE we enter into particulars connected with 
 our subject : Sheep, their Breeding and Man- 
 agement : it would be as well to consider, at some 
 length, the principles on which breeding in general 
 should be conducted. For, the problems connected 
 with breeding, crossing, etc., are both numerous and 
 intricate. 
 
 For instance, why does the produce of a Dorking 
 cock and a Cochin-china hen differ so entirely from 
 the produce of a Cochin cock and a Dorking hen ? 
 It is so, and, remark, the difference, though more or 
 less varied in quantity, is constant in quality. 
 
 Why, again, is the get by a male horse out of a 
 female donkey utterly distinct from the produce of a 
 stallion ass and a mare ? So different, indeed, from 
 one another are they, that each has, in England, a 
 distinctive name, the one by a male ass being called 
 a « mule », that by a horse, a « hinny >•. 
 
 As to the original whence our domesticated 
 animals spring, there can be little doubt that, as in 
 
— 6 — 
 
 the case of wheat and other cereals, of pease and 
 other pulse, they have been fostered and protected 
 by the hand of man, until the rough progenitors of 
 our Devons and Kyloes, have, in the persons of their 
 descendants, become the smooth, finished pictures 
 '.ve see in our exhibitions. 
 
 And we must distinguish races from breeds. We 
 may talk of a Devon or a Kyloe as belonging to a 
 race, but the term cannot with propriety be applied 
 to a Shorthorn ; a Welsh mountain sheep and a 
 Scotch Blackface, both may be said to be part of a 
 race, but a Leicester and an Oxford-down belong to 
 a breed. 
 
 The first person to form the idea of originating 
 a breed of domesticated animals, which should be 
 superior to the native races, the aboriginals, I need 
 hardly say was Robert Bakewell, of Dishley. He 
 began with the sheep, which rough and ragged, small 
 and ill-shaped as was the stock then available, he 
 succeeded by patient selection and considerate 
 matching of parents, in improving into the modern 
 Leicester. With the cattle of his immediate neigh- 
 bourhood, for he wisely chose the animals nearest 
 to his hand as his materials, he succeeded in 
 producing the « Longhorns », still highly esteen^ed 
 
in the rich pastures round Leicester and Rugby, a 
 breed of cattle that, though some years ago they 
 were getting into disrepute, are once more coming 
 into favour. 
 
 Before a man devotes himself to the breeding of 
 any description of stock, he must necessarily form 
 to himself a definite idea of the style, size, and shape 
 of the animal he desires to propagate. 
 
 When Thomas Booth, of Warlaby, began improv- 
 ing the cattle of his vicinity in Yorkshire, he had 
 already in his mind the idea of the modern shorthorn. 
 Somewhere about 1790, observing that the valley 
 of the Tees was depastured by a fine roomy stock 
 of cattle, he chose certain of the best examples of 
 them for his parent stock. The defects that he aimed 
 at suppressing were an undue prominence of the 
 shoulder-point, a general soda-water bottle build of 
 the body, too much « day light » under the belly, and 
 a want of uniformity in laying on flesh evenly and 
 firmly all over the frame. Selecting a few cows 
 from the herd of Mr. Broader, of Fairholme (a tenant 
 of the writer's gt. grandfather), and putting them to 
 moderate size bulls, Mr. Booth succeeded in laying 
 the foundation of « The Booth blood », many of the 
 most celebrated families of Shorthorns of the present 
 4ay owing their existence to these Fairholme cows, 
 
The principle upon which these earlier breeders 
 all worked, was the one that is now universally 
 acknowledged to be correct : « Like produces like » • 
 an unfailing ground to go upon, and one that 
 admits of a far wider application than is generally 
 allowed, and should be regarded not only in the 
 coupling of the sexes for the propagation of the 
 inferior animals, but also in the continuation of the 
 human species ; if more attention were paid to 
 this rule by our heads of families, we should not have 
 so many idiots and scrofulous people about. Nature 
 always avenges an infraction of her laws. 
 
 But, while it is perfectly true that like produces 
 like, there is another rule in biology that steps in to 
 teach us caution, and that is the tendency of all 
 animals to « throw back » to some remote ancestor, 
 whose peculiar points, long forgotten probably, 
 suddenly make their appearance in one of his descen- 
 dants. This is called « atavism » from the Latin word 
 atavus^ an ancestor, originally, a gt., gt., gt. grand- 
 father, and is frequently observed by the breeders of 
 white pigeons, who, in spite of all their pains to 
 keep their birds pure in colour, constantly find, to 
 their disgust, that, from time to time, black feathers 
 will show themselves in the growing squabs, 
 (Darwin) 
 
— 9 — 
 
 Here, then, we find the rule established that it is 
 not enough that immediate parents be of fine shape, 
 good colour, and robust constitution, but they must 
 be descended from families which, for generations, 
 have boasted of desirable qualities, if we are to hope 
 for an offspring that shall not disappoint our expect- 
 ation. 
 
 The form aimed at by all breeders, more or less, 
 of animals intended for the butcher, is that called 
 by mathematicians, the parallelopiped. 
 
 A carpenter's pencil gives a good idea of this figure 
 to non-mathematical readers ; it is contained by six 
 sides, each of which is a parellelogram. Its propor- 
 tions are not only beautiful in themselves, but they 
 have a large capacity within small dimensions. 
 
 There is no doubt that the earlier breeders of 
 improved stock began their work by coupling males 
 and females within the forbidden degrees of consan- 
 guinity. What else could they do ? If they went 
 abroad for unrelated males to put to their females, 
 what did they find ? Inferior animals, not fit to be 
 named in the same class as their own. Bakewell, 
 after he had succeeded in fixing the type, in search 
 of which he set out, could never be tempted to make 
 use of a strange anim.al, however enticing might be 
 
lO 
 
 its form or quality : he bred entirely from his own 
 stock. 
 
 What said Mr. Booth to the advice of a friend of 
 mine, who had recommended him to introduce for- 
 eign blood into his herd? I will, if you will tell me 
 where to find any as good ! 
 
 Let us now, for a short time, turn our attention 
 to 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING 
 
 Now, the principles of breeding are no longer 
 veiled in mystery-, but, from the constant inquiry to 
 which they have been subjected, and from the very 
 high attainments of those gentlemen by whom those 
 inquiries have been conducted, a flood of light has 
 been thrown on the question, and rules have been 
 laid down for the guidance of breeders which, when 
 faithfully followed out, will invariably prove satisfac- 
 tory. 
 
 It seems, then, that the organs and functions of 
 the animal structure are divisible into three great 
 classes, the locomotive^ the vital^ and the mental. 
 
 The locomotive organs are the bones ; the lig- 
 aments ; the muscles. These are connected with the 
 n^ryes of motion which arise from the «« cerebellun; » 
 
— II — 
 
 the back part of the head. The shape, the limbs, and 
 the skin, belong to this class. 
 
 The vital organs are the organs of absorption, as 
 the lymphatics ; of circulation, as the arteries, veins ; 
 the organs of secretion, as the glands. These are 
 connected with the sympathetic nerves, which 
 spring from the « cerebrum », the fore part of the 
 head. The digestive, respirator}', and reproductive 
 organs, with the fat, milk, and other animal products, 
 belong to this class. 
 
 The mental organs : the eyes, the ears ; the organs 
 of perception, and the organs of volition. The func- 
 tions of the firsc are to receive impressions from 
 without ; of the second, to perceive, compare, reflect ; 
 of the third to will, and, consequently, to throw the 
 muscles into action to fulfil its purpose. 
 
 Now, the grand purpose of these inquiries is to 
 determine whether or not one parent, or both 
 indiscriminately, impart their organisation to the 
 offspring. And it is to this point that, in spite of 
 its want of attractiveness, we should turn our 
 earnest attention, for it is owing to the indifference 
 with which it has been so long regarded that 
 breeding has been so uncertain an undertakino^. 
 
— 12 — 
 
 Men of science, after innumerable experiments, 
 have decided that one class of organs is propagated 
 by the male, and the other by the female. The 
 whole law may be summarised thus ; the dam gives 
 the whole of the nutritive organs, and the sire the 
 whole of the locomotive organs. The thinking 
 organs come in « equal » and « distinct » portions 
 from both parents. 
 
 Following out, then, to its fullest limit this 
 doctrine, we see that, if we desire to improve any 
 part of the locomotive organisation in our stock, we 
 shall look for it in vain from the female ; if, on the 
 other hand we seek to improve the nutritive system, 
 we should look for it in vain from the male ; that 
 is, in simple terms, if we desire, in cattle for ins- 
 tance, an improvement in the shape, we must look 
 to the bull for it, if we want increased production 
 of milk, or increased tendency to fatten, we must 
 look to the cow. So, in breeding sheep, it is the 
 ram who gives the wool, the ewe who gives the 
 tendency to fatten and the increased production of 
 milk. 
 
 When we consider that both parents have a share, 
 a distinct and positive share, in the mental organs, 
 it will not be difficult to see why, after a long and 
 
— 13 — 
 
 injudicious course of in-and-in breeding, all desire 
 seems to be wanting in the male. Suppose the case 
 of a bull breeding with his daughter and again with 
 his grand daughter. Now, he gives, let us say, the 
 anterior orgfans to his daugfhter, thus the two animals 
 become, so far, identical ; but, in breeding with his 
 daughter, he may give his posterior organs to his 
 grand daughter; and, as the grand daughter will thus 
 bear both his series of organs — the former from the 
 mother, the latter from himself — it is evident that, 
 as regards these organs, the two are perfectly iden- 
 tical, and the identity of the mental organs destroys 
 all desire for reproduction, the differences which are 
 essential to excitement having no existence. 
 
 But, although some of our early improvers were 
 as we have said, obliged, from the nature of the case, 
 to tread a dangerous path, this is no longer the prac. 
 tice of our great breeders. They all have lines of 
 blood, families, of relations it is true, but sufficiently 
 far removed to be matched without fear of the conse- 
 quences. And it is fortunate for all of us that it is 
 so, for in no other way could the improvement made 
 of late years by crossing have been carried out. The 
 effect of adhering tenaciously to a particular family, 
 or line of blood, has been to confer on the male a 
 peculiarly impressive power, by which his form and 
 
— 14 — 
 
 substance are transmitted to his offspring, the dam 
 contributing, apparently, nothing towards it. In no 
 breed is this so marked a quality as in the Shorthorn, 
 probably because in no other case has so much pains 
 been taken to preserve the lines of blood pure and 
 intact. The writer saw, at the Hon. M. H.Cochrane's, 
 a few years ago, a calf, by Royal Commander out of 
 a Kyloe heifer, that disowned, in every thing but the 
 jolly ruggedness of his roan coat, the very mother 
 that bore him ! Hence it is that four crosses of 
 Shorthorn blood are considered enough to admit the 
 produce to Herd-book honours. 
 
 CROSSING 
 
 Nobody can doubt about the wonderful good that 
 has been produced by the well conceived system of 
 crossing that has now, for many years, been prac- 
 tised in England. At first, the principle upon which 
 the practice was based was little understood, but of 
 late years the more abrupt and violent attempts of 
 the earlier breeders have been avoided, and the more 
 natural, and therefore more sensible course has been 
 pursued. One rule, however, has been in vogue 
 for, I can safely attest, the last 60 years, viz., to put 
 the best of the pair, i. e. the male atop^ and to 
 employ in crossing, as in every other branch of 
 breeding, nothing but thoroughbred males. 
 
— 15 — 
 
 Before beginning to improve our stock of any 
 kind by crossing, it is evident that we should put 
 this query to ourselves : is our soil sufficiently good 
 to feed the product of the purposed cross as it will 
 need to be fed ? There are many situations in which 
 a high-bred stock of sheep, cattle, or horses cannot be 
 maintained as a breeding-stock ; continued crossing 
 cannot in such cases be followed out, for, eventually 
 the whole herd or flock would become like the tho- 
 roughbred parent, and utterly unfit for the locality. 
 Thus, to keep on breeding from Shorthorn bulls 
 and the common cow of the country, — what the 
 Americans call « scrubs » — on the poorer clay and 
 sands of this province, would be most injudicious. 
 The first and second crosses are all that should be 
 attempted, the heifers being still kept true to the 
 parent stock, until the general improvement, to 
 which we all so anxiously look forward is secured, 
 and the land becomes fit to support a superior class 
 of animals. 
 
 As for the notion that exists, that, if a large sire 
 be put to a small dam, the foetus will be so large 
 that the mother will not be able to bring it to the 
 light, I attach no weight to it ; for the foetus is 
 always proportioned to the matrix that contains it. 
 There may be a little trouble, perhaps, in its expul- 
 
— le- 
 sion on account of the increased size of the brain of 
 the improved offspring. I have bred, in cattle, sheep 
 and horses, from all sorts of males, and never found 
 any difficulty on this score, but I have found that 
 where a thoroughbred male of good form has been 
 put to a rough country-bred mare, the progeny was 
 invariably far superior to the dam in all outward 
 parts, and that the rugged healthiness of the dam, 
 with her abundant flow of milk gave her plenty of 
 strength to bring forth and to sustain her better bred 
 foal afterwards. 
 
 Look, for instance, at the modern Exmoon ponies. 
 Seventy or eighty years ago, they were little crea- 
 tures from ten to twelve hands high, with nothing 
 but their constitution and hardiness to recommend 
 them. Now, crossed as they have been with full- 
 sized, thoroughbred stallions, a more perfect type of 
 pony for a lady's phaeton cannot be found, and 
 they have so increased in height that many of them 
 run from 14 to 14^ hands. 
 
 Again ; I have used Shorthorn bulls of such size 
 and weight on small country cows that the latter 
 could barely support the weight of the bull at 
 service, and the parturition of the calf was never 
 attended by any evil consequence more than is usual 
 in an ordinar}' herd. 
 
Once more ; I have coupled the small refined type 
 of Southdown ewes with the heavy Hampshire- 
 down ram, and, although the head of the Hampshire- 
 down was in those days disproportionately large, the 
 lambing was got through with much as usual. 
 
 And here I must mention, as an instance of the 
 efifect of crossing, the creation of the Babraham flock 
 of Southdowns, premising that what I am about to 
 state is merely an opinion, I formed purely from 
 my own judgment, without the slightest evidence, 
 material or otherwise, to go upon. 
 
 The original progenitors of this most beautiful 
 collection of sheep were brought, somewhere about 
 65 years ago, from Glynde, Sussex, the well known 
 abode of the celebrated Mr. Elhnan, one of the first 
 great breeders of the Southdown. They were elegant, 
 deer-like creatures, with narrow chests, light fore- 
 quarters, good, though of course .small, legs of 
 mutton, and good loins. They « went to fold » every 
 night on the fallows, on the breezy downs looking 
 over the sea. We shall hear more about this folding 
 system later. Seldom killed before three years old, 
 their weight, when fat, varied from 14 to 16 pounds 
 the quarter. To this very day, the highest prices 
 
— i8 — 
 
 quoted in the papers for mutton in the great London 
 market is for Southdowns ; from 60 to 64 lbs. 
 carcass, i. e., 15 to 16 ft)s the quarter. What the 
 flavour of the meat of these small sheep was, those 
 who have been so fortunate as to taste the saddle of 
 a three or a four year old Southdown wether will 
 recall with pleasure : such meat is not to be met 
 with now-a-days, as it would not pay to keep sheep 
 to that age. 
 
 From this flock of Mr. EUman, Mr. Jonas Webb 
 selected a few ewes and a ram which he took with 
 him to a small farm in Cambridgeshire, belonging 
 to Mr. Adeane, of Babraham, whose game-keeper, 
 Mr. Webb was at that time. What the subsequent 
 treatment of the flock was, nobody, I believe, ever 
 knew, but it was most successful ; as the wethers at 
 20 months old often weighed from 22 to 26 pounds 
 a quarter, and yet retained all the quality of the 
 parent stock as regards meat and wool, while the 
 bosom was enlarged, the neck strengthened, and the 
 wool much improved. Of course, the better keep 
 of the Cambridgeshire farm must have had an 
 immense influence on the growth of the animal, for 
 no doubt the small size of the Sussex sheep in its 
 native county is, in great measure, due to the absurd 
 practice of the flockmasters of that county of sending 
 
— 19 — 
 
 the ewe-lambs out into the poor farms of the low- 
 lands (the Weald\ at so much a score for the winter, 
 io harden them, as it is called ! And, truly, it ought 
 to harden them, for when we saw the /egs^ as the 
 year-old lambs, are locally termed — hogs or hoggets^ 
 in other parts, — just before shearing time, they had 
 returned from their winter quarters mere bags of 
 bones. I remember seeing a lot, from the flocks of 
 three of the best breeders in Sussex, Mr. Tanner, who 
 had then 2,000 ewes, among them, and it was difficult 
 to believe that sensible men could expose their 
 young stock-ewes to such hardships. It must be 
 remembered that the Sussex flockmaster sold all his 
 wether lambs at the autumn fairs, retaining at home 
 only the older ewes. 
 
 Well, perhaps I was mistaken about the cross 
 of the long-wool in the Babraham flock, and at all 
 events it was a most masterly combination. On one 
 fine day in July, 1852, I passed a couple of days 
 at Babraham and saw the annual sale and letting of 
 the rams and lamb-rams. How many were let and 
 sold, I do not recollect, but I have kept the amount 
 fresh in my memory : ;^3,752, or $18,760 ! So 
 carefully had the flock been bred, that the following 
 year I saw 150 rams, just shorn for the first time, 
 turned out of a large shed, from among whom it 
 
— 20 — 
 
 would have puzzled the best judge in England to 
 select the most perfect, so equal were they in build, 
 colour, and carriage. 
 
 Another successful instance of crossing is the well 
 known Oxford-down, now, more properly called 
 Oxfords. It was only after a 20 years endeavour to 
 form a permanent type of sheep, by the union of the 
 Hampshire-down and the Cotswold, that Samuel 
 Druce, of Eynsham, Oxfordshire, succeeded. At 
 first, and for a long time, the legs were some dark, 
 others light ; t^e faces of some were white, of others 
 brown, and of others mottled ; there was no uni- 
 formity anywhere. Now, however, all this is 
 changed ; the type, or character, has long been fixed, 
 and the sheep in one of the leading ram-breeding 
 flocks are as uniform in character and colour as the 
 sheep in a flock of Leicesters or Cheviots. 
 
 In crossing, we should aim at combining utility 
 and beauty, though this union is almost a necessary 
 sequel of judicious selection, for 
 
 * ' Beauty never deigns to dwell 
 
 Where use and aptitude are strangers. " 
 
 All attempts at crossing should be kept within 
 certain limits, and a clear idea formed, before 
 beginning, of the object in view, and this idea, when 
 once formed, should be firmly adhered to. 
 
— 21 — 
 
 For instance ; the cross of the Cotswold ram and 
 the Hampshire-down ewe, as we have seen, turned 
 out most successfully ; but the cross between the 
 Cheviot ram and the Leicester ewe, as well as that 
 between the Black-face ram and the Leicester ewe, 
 were complete failures ; the progeny, in both cases, 
 showing a worse and more uncertain organisation 
 than either of the parents. 
 
 If it be true that breeding from a good sire and 
 dam does not necessarily ensure a good progeny, can 
 it be true that " Like begets like ? » I answer, that 
 I believe the adage to be true in a certain sense, but 
 it is undoubtedly not true in the popular sense in 
 which it is used, and I believe it has led many a 
 young breeder astray, by inducing him to believe 
 that, when he had purchased a good-looking sire, 
 he had secured all the conditions necessary for a 
 good progeny. There is no error more prevalent 
 among young breeders and there can scarcely be a 
 more fatal one. An animal has certain qualities 
 apparent to the hand and eye ; it has also hidden 
 qualities that neither the hand nor the eye can 
 detect, but which hidden or latent qualities descend 
 to the offspring, and, when the animal has been 
 crossed with another animal of different blood, these 
 qualities will produce new combinations palpable 
 
— 22 — 
 
 and unexpected. The above maxim is true then in 
 this sense ; that although the offspring may appear 
 unlike either father or mother, yet the peculiar 
 properties of both parents are not lost in the off- 
 spring ; they are inherited, but in combination may 
 have produced effects that probably had not, and 
 could not, with any degree of certainty, have been 
 foreseen. That these qualities are not lost would 
 appear evident, as it is found that peculiarities 
 derived from even remote ancestors will, from time 
 to time, more or. less frequently, according to the 
 skill and perseverance of the breeder, show them- 
 selves, or '( crop out, » to use the term of the geologist. 
 
 The law of crossing is that when each parent is 
 of a different breed, both being equal in age and 
 vigour, the male gives the back head and locomotive 
 organs, the female giving the face and the nutritive 
 organs. This law, in its effects on the domesticated 
 animals, is very similar to the law of selection ; but 
 in crossing, the parents always maintain this rela- 
 tively position, while in ordinary breeding, the par- 
 ents change position in proportion to the compara- 
 tively greater vigor of the characteristics of each, 
 and when one imprints the prevailing characteris- 
 tics, the other stamps the opposite. 
 
 The cause that, in the crosses, the male gives 
 
— 23 — 
 
 the cerebellum^ or back of the head, and the locomo- 
 tive system, is both striking and beautiful. If no 
 being can desire that of which it is already in posses- 
 sion ; if, on the contrary, it must desire that of 
 which it is most devoid (if not incompatible), it 
 cannot be wondered at that in crosses, when the 
 desired difference is greatest, the male, whose desire 
 is more ardent, should stamp the system by which 
 he exercises that desire, namely the voluntary loco- 
 motive, upon the progeny. If, then, of the two great 
 series of organs described, each belongs entirely to a 
 distinct parent, we can neither desire in the proge- 
 ny both series from one parent, nor portions of both 
 from each parent ; and every attempt to attain 
 either end must be a failure. It moreover shows 
 that, in a feeble or imperfect cross, bad as well as 
 good combinations may be produced ; but that such 
 a progeny has present the desired qualities must be 
 alone preserved for future breeding, while the infe- 
 rior must be set aside. The intermediate character 
 of the qualities produced in crossing is owing, not 
 to each of the parents imperfectly contributing its 
 share in the progeny's organization, but that, in 
 their new^ combination, each series of organs acts 
 upon and therefor modifies the other, (i) 
 
 (i) Walker : "On intermarriage. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 OF THE DIFFERENT BREEDS OF SHEEP 
 
 ^HEEP, ill general, may be divided into two clas- 
 ses : long-woolled and short-wooUed ; though 
 occasionally it may be convenient to speak of the 
 middle-woolled, such as the Oxfords, Shropshires, 
 etc. 
 
 All the Down-breeds belong to the short-wooUed 
 class ; all the white-faced, such as the Lincolns, 
 Leicesters, etc, to the long-woolled. The former are 
 superior in the flavour of the meat, and more active 
 in their habits, than the long-wooUs ; they stand 
 crowding better, /. ^., more can be kept on the same 
 extent of land, and their wool, in general, fetches 
 a higher price on the market. 
 
 In this country, particularly in this province, 
 owing to the prevailing practice of domestic man- 
 ufacturing, it has become the habit of the farmer 
 to look upon the sheep as a wool-grower rather than 
 as a producer of meat for the table ; consequently, 
 itf any improvement was sought for in the older 
 flocks of the French-Canadian sheep, it was found 
 in the long-wools, the Leicester or the Cotswold ; 
 and this'may account in orreat measure for the infer- 
 
iority of the greater part of the mutton we meet 
 with at the hotels in the country towns of the prov- 
 ince. Before the day of the late lamented Major 
 Campbell, of St. Hilaire, there was hardly a Down 
 sheep to be met with in the country ; thus, those 
 farmers, who really would have improved their 
 flocks if they could have found the where-with, were 
 left stranded, so to speak. 
 
 However, in spite of our undisguised partiality 
 for the short- wools, we must not forget that the 
 great majority of the sheep in the country are still 
 long-wools, and that a brief description of the dif- 
 ferent breeds will be found interesting to their 
 owners. 
 
 Chief breeds of long-woolled sheep kept in the 
 province of Quebec are the Leicester and the Cots- 
 wold, with a few small flocks of Dorset-horns, that 
 should rather be reckoned among the middle-wools. 
 
 THE LEICESTER 
 
 The Leicester, so called from the well known 
 county of that name, is one of the earliest instan- 
 ces of what can be done by the improver's skill and 
 energy. Robert Bakewell, of whom more hereafter, 
 was the man who first, so to speak, made this val- 
 uable breed of sheep. The wool of the Leicester is 
 
— 26 — 
 
 not so long as the wool of the Lincoln, but, there 
 is no doubt of its having been employed in the re- 
 
 moulding of the other long- wools. iVs far back as 
 1668, Markham, writing of the sheep of the English 
 
— 27 — 
 
 Midland counties, speaks of a large-boned sheep, of 
 the best shape, and the deepest staple (the thread 
 or pile of the wool) ; they were chiefly pasture 
 sheep, and their wool was coarser than that of the 
 Cotsal. 
 
 Note. — We may remark here that « Cotsal, » 
 or in the modern form,"Cotswold," a range of hills in 
 Gloucestershire, is not, as usually supposed, derived 
 from cot, a mud-hut, and wold, a wood, but from 
 cote, a wood, and weald, a cleared forest, a curious 
 example of two synanymous elements meeting in 
 the same word, which often occurs in English 
 names of places. ^ 
 
 Professor Low also says : « There is no reason, 
 therefore, to assume, from any of the characters 
 presented by the wool of the new Leicester breed, 
 that the parent stock was any other than the long- 
 woolled sheep of the Midland counties. « 
 
 It was thus from the ordinary sheep of his district 
 that Robert Bakewell, a man of peculiar character,by 
 dint of thought and determined perseverance created 
 the New Leicester or, as they were commonly called 
 at first, the Dishley breed. His success was due to a 
 firm faith in the power of animals to transmit their 
 good qualities to their progeny, and to his cons- 
 tantly keeping his eye on the type he wished to 
 produce. Apparently, he did not greatly trouble 
 himself about the wool, but aimed at bringing 
 
— 28 — 
 
 out an animal taking in form, of early maturity, 
 and possessed of a tendency to lay flesh on the upper 
 part of the body. 
 
 It was about the year 1755 that Bakewell began 
 the improvement of the breed of sheep that lay at 
 his own door. He worked upon the principle, of 
 which he was the originator, that the properties of 
 the parents may be transmitted to their offspring 
 until fixity of type is the result. He had also what 
 in modern slang would be called « a good eye for a 
 beast, )) whether that beast was a sheep, a bull, or 
 a stallion. He could see that quality was prefer- 
 able to mere bulk ; that perfection of form must be 
 accompanied by readiness to profit by food. 
 
 The result of Bakewell's work was the formation 
 of an improved sheep, somewhat smaller than the 
 older breed, but more symmetrical, thicker, deeper, 
 and more easily fattened at an earlier age. He reaped 
 a great harvest from his exertions ; his first ram 
 let for, in our currency, $4.50 the season, but before 
 long the price rose to $500.00, and in 1786 he made 
 15,000.00 by letting his stock. In 1789, he let 
 three rams for $6,000.00, and $10,000.00 for seven ; 
 and in the same year he made $15,000.00 more by 
 letting the remainder of the rams to the Dishley 
 Society, then just founded for the purpose of car- 
 rying on the good work. 
 
 The above facts, says Mr. Wrightson, must appear 
 extraordinary to any one who reflects upon the 
 
-^29 — 
 
 greater value of money one hundred years ago than 
 now, and the much less general appreciation at 
 that time of the advantages of wellbred stock. 
 Then, there were no foreign buyers to stimulate 
 biddings, no princes or millionnaires competing for 
 favourite strains of blood. 
 
 THE IMPROVED LEICESTER 
 
 The modern Leicester is a white-faced, hornless 
 sheep, covered with a fleece, the staple of which is 
 from seven to eight inches long, with a short 
 twisted curl at the end. 
 
 Points : — Nostrils and lips black, nose rather nar- 
 row with a tendency towards the Roman, but the 
 shape of the face in general like a wedge, and 
 covered with wool as to the forehead, though I 
 have seen many good sheep with a naked front ; 
 no signs of a horn : ears thin, long, and mobile ; a 
 black spot occasionally on face and ears ; a good eye ; 
 neck short, and level with the back, thick, and 
 tapering from skull to shoulders and bosom ; 
 breast deep, wide, and prominent ; shoulders some- 
 what upright and wide over the tops ; great thick- 
 ness through the heart ; well filled up behind the 
 shoulders, giving a great girth ; ribs well sprung 
 from the back-bone, loins wide, hips level, quarters 
 long and straight, well set-on tail, good legs of 
 mutton well rounded over the hock, barrel round, 
 great depth of carcase, fine in the bone ; the fleece 
 
— 30 — 
 
 curly and free from black hairs ; the back and loins 
 well-covered, the flesh firm, the pelt or skin springy 
 to the touch ; the legs well set-on, hocks straight, 
 pasterns firm, and feet neat. 
 
 There is no use in keeping Leicesters too long 
 before fattening them for the butcher, for they get so 
 fat after they reach the age of fifteen months, or so, 
 that, as somebody says somewhere, no one but a 
 Scotch collier would eat them, and thereby hangs 
 a tale : Many years ago, in 1848 or 49 I think, I 
 was passing a few days at the Royal Hotel at Nor- 
 wich, in a county where the farmers were all 
 extensive sheep-men. Fancying that, in such a 
 town, the mutton must be good, I ordered, for the 
 dinner of myself and party, a leg of mutton, among 
 other things. iVt the appointed hour, up came the 
 mutton ; I carved it, helped my friends round, and 
 then myself. « What on earth is this ? » exclaimed 
 I, on tasting it. « The mutton you ordered. Sir, » 
 replied the waiter. « Oh ! » said one of my guests, 
 who happened to be a resident of the county ; 
 most of our sheep here are Leicesters ; perhaps 
 long-wools are not kept where you come from, n 
 « No, said I, and if this a leg of long-wool mutton, 
 I hope they never will be, for it is the worst fla- 
 voured mutton I ever tasted. « Without stating 
 that I had never eaten anything but Down mutton 
 before, I may safely say that the flavour of the Nor- 
 wich meat was so strange to me that I thought 
 
— 3r — 
 
 some one had been playing me a trick to see if I 
 should find it out. 
 
 Says Prof. Wrightson, " There is an idea preva. 
 lent that the day of the Leicester is gone by. Pure- 
 bred Leicesters are so much given to la}' on fat 
 thickly," (and that on the loin and neck especially) 
 " and the demand for fat meat of all kind has so 
 completely ceased, that everywhere the Downs are 
 preferred." The great value of the Leicester is for 
 crossing, and, before I left England, the flocks in 
 the county of Norfolk, where, as I said before, the 
 Leicester reigned, in 48, pre-eminently, had almost 
 all been converted into half-breds, so it would be 
 wrong to say that the Leicester is played out. A 
 useful cross is that between the South-down and 
 the Leicester, or the one between the Hampshire- 
 down and the Leicester. Of the numerous crosses 
 used between the Leicester up in the North-country 
 I can say nothing, for I am not familiar with them, 
 but there is, according to those who know what 
 the}' are talking about, scarcely a breed which has 
 not felt the influence of the Leicester, from the 
 Cheviot and the Black-face of the Borders to the 
 Cotswold of the hills and the Lincoln of the fens. 
 
 LINCOLN 
 
 As we have just mentioned the Lincolns, we may 
 as well devote a few sentences to them, though we 
 do not fancy there are many of them kept Canada. 
 
32 
 
— 33 — 
 
 The Lincoln is not unlike a large lyeicester. It 
 is the heaviest breed of sheep known, a full-mouth- 
 ed ram of that breed having been killed, in 1826, 
 that weighed 96 ^2 lbs. the quarter ! The flesh 
 handles more hrmly than the flesh of the Leicester, 
 the wool is extraordinarily long, samples having 
 been met with that measured 21 inches in length; 
 the whole fleece of the above-mentioned ram 
 weighed 30 lbs. 
 
 By the bye, it would be well to say that when- 
 ever the weight of a fleece is stated in this essay, it 
 is to be understood that it is the weight of a 
 fleece that has been thoroughly washed on the 
 sheep's back before shearing. I shall describe the 
 operation of washing in the chapter on shearing. 
 
 The wool of the Lincoln is very bright and lus- 
 trous ; hence it has gained the name of lustre- 
 wool, though it loses that character when taken 
 away from its native habitat. In 1788, Bakewell 
 got into a famous dispute with Mr. Chaplin, an 
 ancestor of the member of Parliament who, not 
 very long ago, was Minister of Agriculture in Lord 
 Salisbury's cabinet. It seems that Bakewell was sup- 
 posed to have been prying about Chaplin's rams, 
 after having been refused leave to inspect them, 
 and Chaplin, naturally, was not pleased. However, 
 Bakewell got out of the scrape pretty easily, show- 
 ing that he had been introduced to the flock by 
 
— 34 — 
 
 Chaplin's own man, and had not, as Chaplin accus- 
 ed him of doing, « been meanly sneaking into my 
 pastures at Wrangle." 
 
 The new or improved Lincoln is the product of 
 lycicester crosses upon the old lyincoln, and accord- 
 ing to my idea can only be seen in perfection in 
 his own home, as he needs, to what M. Mirobo- 
 lant calls « perfectionate his work, » rich pastures 
 and lots of room. As a mutton sheep, he is infe- 
 rior to the Downs, as far as quality goes, though 
 you must not tell a Lincolnshire man so, for I 
 recollect some years ago a young Lincolnshire 
 farmer, at Sorely who was very anxious to send, on 
 his return to England, a few Lincoln ewes and a 
 ram to begin a flock of that breed in that notor- 
 iously poor sandy spot ! 
 
 The highest prices paid for rams of late or, indeed, 
 at any time, have been paid for Lincolns, a ram of 
 the breed having been sold for a thousand guineas, 
 $5,000.00, only last year ! He was bred, if my 
 memory serves me, by Mr. Dudding of Riby. 
 
 BORDER-1.EICESTER 
 
 I have not heard of late of any B order-Leicester s 
 being kept in this province, but I remember a small 
 flock of them, in 1870, being on the hands of the 
 late Mr. Thomas Irving, of Petite Cote, on the 
 
— 35 — 
 
 island of Montreal. If I do not mistake, the late 
 Judge Ramsay had some of them, for I remember 
 a long-legged brute of a ram, that could jump like 
 a well-bred hunter, and who knocked me over (from 
 behind !) when I was at the Judge's place at St- 
 Hugues. The breed, however, was in high favour 
 
 mmm 
 
 in the counties of Cumberland and Northumberland, 
 and came out well at the last meeting at Windsor 
 of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. 
 
-36- 
 
 The Border-Leicesters owe their imptoved state 
 to the Culleys, who farmed on an immense scale at 
 Wooler, Northumberland, paying rent for their 
 several farms to the amount of ^6,000 or $30,000.00! 
 At that time, 1767, the long-legged, rough-woolled 
 Tees-Water was the chief breed of that county, but 
 the new Leicesters, brought from Dishley by the 
 Culleys, soon made a change in the appearance and 
 quality of the flocks. In 1888, Ivord Polwarth sold 
 from the Mertoun flock 28 shearling rams for an 
 average of ^36. 9 s. 3 d., and one for 165 guineas, 
 or $182.00 and $825.00 ; in 1890, the Mertoun 
 rams averaged £^2)t ^9 s- 4 d., or $268.00. 
 
 COTSWOLD 
 
 Unlike most of the long-wools, the Cotswold 
 seems to have early taken a fancy to the bleakest 
 range of hills in the West-midlands of England. 
 Rising from the River Severn, the lovely vale 
 of Glo'ster spreads its rich meadows along the flat, 
 gradually sloping upwards, till after terrace upon 
 terrace has been mounted, the view is arrested by 
 the steep, abrupt escartpment of the Cotwolds. 
 Cold and bleak from their exposed situation, the 
 hills produce rare food for stock. The pastures, 
 though not what our fathers would have poetically 
 termed « lush, /. afford excessively healthy grass, and 
 the rootcrops are both abundant and nutritious. 
 
 The Cotswold sheep are among the most ancient 
 
'— zi — 
 
 of our reorganised breeds. « Here » says Camden, 
 « they feed in great numbers flockes of sheep, long 
 necked, and square of bulk and bone by reason, as 
 is commonly thought, of the weally and hilly 
 
 situation of their pasturage, whose wool being more 
 fine and soft is held in grreat account bv all nations. « 
 
 Stowe, in his Chronicles, says that, in 1463, Ed. 
 IV " concluded an amnesty and league with King 
 
-38- 
 
 Henry of Castille and King John of Aragon, at the 
 conchidino; whereof he crranted licence for certain 
 Coteswold sheep to be transported into the country 
 of Spain, which have there since mightily increased 
 and multiplied to the Spanish profit. » 
 
 But were these fine-wooled sheep the Cotswolds 
 as we know them ? HardJy, I think ; they were 
 probably more like the merino ; for the pasture on 
 the hills was shorter and finer than the grass on 
 the rich grazing lands of Leicestershire and the 
 other « Shires, « as our hunting men Quoriun pars 
 parva qui term them, and short, fine grass would 
 naturally produce short, fine wool. 
 
 There is no doubt that in the i8th century many 
 Leicester rams were imported into the Cotswold 
 country, and the breaking up of the downs, fol- 
 lowed by the growing of turnips, would tend to 
 increase the size of the sheep and the length and 
 strength of their w^ool. 
 
 All Canadians who care about sheep, know a 
 Cotswold when they see one ; but many Canadian 
 breeders of Cotswolds do not know that a gray-face 
 is by no means a disqualification. I constantly see 
 in the Gloucester Chronicle^ a paper I receive every 
 week, advertisements of flocks for sale by auction, 
 in which gray-faces are mentioned as enviable char- 
 acteristics of the sheep in question. 
 
— 39 — 
 
 The Cotswold is a big, upstanding sheep, with a 
 more degage carriage than the I,incoln or Leicester. 
 His heavily wooUed forehead is his great distinguish- 
 ing mark, though his wool in general, with its bold, 
 open curl should, to any judge of sheep, at once 
 differentiate him from the other long-wools. Rather, 
 « ewe-necked •> and « goose-rumped. » it is true, but) 
 on the whole a good « body of mutton ; )» his 
 shoulders broad on the tops, legs well let down, 
 ample loins and well-sprung ribs ; all these points 
 show him to be a really valuable sheep for every 
 table except where small joints are in request, as in 
 the case of the West-end oi London, to which market, 
 it is to be hoped, all our Quebec mutton will find its 
 way when our farmers learn their true interests and 
 devote themselves to the production of the best 
 breeds of both cattle and sheep. 
 
 The fleece of the Cotswold runs from 6 to 8 Jbs.^ 
 though some exceptional fleeces may be met with 
 that go over 8 and even 9 ft)s. 
 
 Though two or three years ago, at the Smithfield 
 Club show, in London, a pen of Cotswold lambs 
 was nearly, if not quite, at the head of the lambs 
 exhibited the Cotswold, as a general rule, is by no 
 means celebrated for early maturity. They are said, 
 by those who know them well, to be delicate when 
 young, and to require time to come to the knife. 
 They will not bear the close folding that suits the 
 Down breeds, but have to be kept in small lots, a 
 
— 40 — 
 
 fact that struck us forcibly when we first ran against 
 them, unexpectedly, at a well-known farm near 
 Compton, some 28 years ago. 
 
 « Cotswold mutton, » says Prof. Wrightson, is of 
 second quality, like most of the long-woolled breeds, 
 and is pale in colour and long in the grain. When 
 long- wool was higher in price than short-wool, the 
 position of the Cotswold was stronger than at present 
 as a Cotswold fleece was well worth a sovereign 
 — $5.00 — . Now, the same fleece is probably not 
 worth more than ten shillings. For a time, the 
 demand for Cotswold rams seemed in danger of 
 falling off, but during the last two or three seasons 
 there has been a reaction in their favour. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SHORT WOOLLED SHEEP 
 
 "W'ot much use in talking about the Kents, or the 
 Wensleydale breeds of sheep, as there are none 
 of either in this country, so we will plunge at once 
 into the study of the great exponents of the true 
 short-wools, the Down breeds ; and first of the true 
 protagonist of the clan, the 
 
 SOUTH-DOWN 
 
 The true habitat of this charming sheep is the 
 Downs of the county of Sussex. Having been a 
 pupil of the late Wm. Rigden, of Hove, near 
 Brighton, to whom I went for six months for the 
 express purpose of studying the South- down « at 
 home, » and having found him always ready to 
 impart any information of which he was possessed, 
 I may say, I think without vanity, that I know what 
 a South-down sheep is as well as any man not born 
 among them, can know. The pleasantest six 
 months I ever passed in my life were passed under 
 Mr. Rigden's roof, and our daily visits to the ewes 
 — for I fortunately arrived at Hove just as the ewes 
 were lambing, — were full of interest. 
 
— 42 — 
 
 A very curious thing struck me almost the first 
 day : the shepherd knew every ewe by sight, could 
 name their sire and dam at a glance ; but that was 
 
 SOUTH-DOWN RAM 
 
 a mere trifle, compared with his skill in detecting 
 any ewe with a tendency to neglect her newly born 
 offspring ; in pouncing upon her briskly, though 
 
— 43 — 
 
 gently and compelling her to discharge the duties 
 of her position. 
 
 Mr. Rigden often used to laugh at his first 
 attempt to win honours at the R. A. Society's show 
 of breeding stock. It was, I think, at Manchester 
 he first exhibited, and with what glee he used to 
 recite the speech of one of the brothers Webb who, 
 looking at Mr. Rigden's best Southdown ram, 
 cruelly told him that " he had better tie it round 
 his neck and give it a dip in the sea at Hove ! This 
 was some time about 1843, ^^ '44^ ^^^ within five 
 years of that time, Mr. Rigden was winning prize 
 after prize all over the South of England, and at 
 last, when the Grand ]\Ionarque, Jonas Webb, gave 
 up exhibiting, Rigden mgn^^^ facile princeps^ over 
 all the Southdown breeders, and as Prof. Wright- 
 son says : « The Southdown race in its own district 
 w^as long well maintained by the late Mr. Rigden, a 
 though that is but tame praise from such a pen. 
 
 Have my readers any idea of what the Downs in 
 the South of England are like ? Stretching from 
 the lucald (same as wold in Lincolnshire, and zvald 
 in German) runs a series of low hills, succeeding one 
 another, like what the Ontario people call « Rolling- 
 land )i. only more acute. These hills, downs (in 
 French diiiies) are all situated on the chalk rock, 
 which acts as an all pervading drain, so that within 
 an hour or two after the heaviest rain the surface is 
 as dr)' as it was before the rain fell. Owing to this 
 
— 44 — 
 
 cool subsoil, the soft, nutritious herbage, though 
 always short, never withers, and the closer it is fed 
 off the denser and more succulent is the pasture. 
 
 Naturally, one would not expect to find animals 
 with broad briskets and large frames on such land 
 as this, and, truly, the sheep of the South-downs are 
 not large, in spite of the extra good feeding they 
 receive as compared with the semi-starvation they 
 used to be obliged to endure in the early part of the 
 last century. Even now, the ordinary Sussex Down 
 is small, and were it not for the high prices the 
 wealthy people of the West-end of London and the 
 visitors to the watering-places of the south coast are 
 willing to pay for, as I said before, small joints, the 
 breeding of this style of sheep could never pay the 
 farmer. The favourite weight of the best sheep in 
 the London market is from 7 ^ to 8 stones, of 8 ft)s. 
 to the stone. You will see by the subjoined list of 
 prices at the Islington cattle market how much size 
 regulates the value of sheep there : 
 
 November 12th. 1900 
 
 7 ^ to 8 stone Downs I1.50 
 
 8 " Scotch 1.50 
 
 9 " Downs 1.46 
 
 10 " Irish 1.28 
 
 10 " Half-breds i-35 J 
 
 10 " Downs 1-39.1 
 
 10 " Ewes 1.07 J; 
 
 12 " Half-breds 1.24 to $1.26 
 
— 45 — 
 
 So you see plainly that in proportion to the rise 
 in weight, down go the prices, for lo stone ewes 
 are worth five cents a pound less than 8 stone Down 
 wethers. 
 
 The Scotch sheep mentioned in the above list 
 are the four-year-old black-faced wethers, and bar- 
 ring their want of fat, very fine mutton they are, 
 though I, probably from being brought up on it, 
 prefer the Down meat. 
 
 Ellman of Glynde is still « a name to conjure by » 
 in all the Down country, for it is to his earnest per- 
 severance and skill that the old-fashioned Sussex 
 Down, small in size, bad in shape, long in the neck, 
 low at both ends, full of faults everywhere, except 
 in the leg, was first improved. 
 
 The Southdown is unquestionably the fashionable 
 sheep ; George III having taken it up, plenty of 
 « his nobility » followed suit, and to-day many of the 
 leading flocks of this breed belong to such men as 
 the Prince of Wales, (i) the Duke of Richmond, 
 lyord Walsingham, &c. 
 
 Southdown mutton is close-grained, dark in 
 colour, tender and juicy, and the proportion of lean 
 to fat is just what it ought to be. To use the but- 
 cher's phrase, « it dies well, » for there is always 
 plenty of internal fat and such. 
 
 (i) Written in 1900. 
 
-46- 
 
 No doubt this breed originally wore horns, but, 
 by dint of selection, these have been « bred-out, » 
 except that, here and there, slight lumps or slugs, as 
 the shepherds call them, make their appearance : a 
 clear case of « heredity. » I remember well, when I 
 was young in the business, the well-known John 
 Clayden, of Littlebury, pointing these slugs out to 
 me in the forehead of a ram I had hired of Jonas 
 Webb. 
 
 As for the light forequarter, as Professor Wright- 
 son observes, what else can be expected in a sheep 
 the muscular development of whose hind-quarters 
 so necessary in an animal that had to climb such 
 steep hills, necessarily implies the contraction of the 
 fore-end. 
 
 The Southdown seems to have an especial par- 
 tiality to chalk soils and not too rich keep ; at least 
 it soon alters both in form and wool when taken to 
 other climes and other pastures. I remember well 
 Lord Ducie, the fortunate owner of the « Seventh 
 Duke of York » and other valuable bulls of the 
 « Bates blood, » hiring a Southdown ram from Jonas 
 Webb for loo guineas the season. He kept the same 
 ram for three seasons, but the progeny of that ram 
 was no more like the sire than I am to Hercules. The 
 form of the lambs was loose and strao-orlino-, the head 
 coarse, and the wool opened and what used to be 
 called « lashy. „ An utter failure, owing entirely to 
 the change from the short, scanty pasture of the 
 

 Downs with their free and bracing air, being 
 exchanged for the close, confined climate of the Vale 
 of Berkeley and the Insh herbage of the Tortworth 
 meadows. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE HAMPSHIRE-DOWN 
 
 "fTTE have now arrived at my own favourite breed : 
 I am not going to pretend, as some have pre- 
 tended, that this breed of sheep is absohitely free 
 from all admixture of blood. It is a Down, empha- 
 tically, and, no doubt, its race has been improved 
 by the selection of rams from the more refined 
 tribes of the more Eastern hills. 
 
 And if I am asked why I have so high an opinion 
 of the qualities of the Hampshire-Downs as being 
 the very sheep for this country, I would simply 
 ask my readers to look over the following article, 
 written for the « Journal of Agriculture »», some years 
 ago, but expressing my views of to-day as it did my 
 views in 1883. 
 
 I may as well say that, when farming in England, 
 I kept a flock of 250 ewes, all but 20 of which 
 were pure-bred Hampshire-Downs, the remainder 
 South-Downs from Mr. Rigden's flock. The Hamp- 
 shire-Downs were not fancy-bred sheep, but regu- 
 lar farmer's sheep bought at the fairs in the county 
 whence they take their name. 
 
Ro3'al ist Prize Hampshire- Down Shearling-ewts (Hillhuri-t flock.) 
 
— A9 — 
 
 HAMPSHIRE-DOWNS AT ISLINGTON, ENG. 
 
 At the Christmas Show of the Smithfield Club 
 1882, these sheep again made their mark. The ques- 
 tion of their superiority as regards early maturity may 
 now be considered as definitively settled. It is ver} 
 much to be regretted that no man, no body of men, 
 has shown sufficient interest in the welfare of the 
 agricultural population of the province to import a 
 few of these most useful sheep. The price is not 
 out of the way : a good ram lamb can be bought for 
 ;^io, and ewes would cost about £\. 10 a piece. 
 Not show sheep ; but honest farmers' stock. The 
 ram should, of course, be selected from a family not 
 too nearly related to the ewes. 
 
 The following^ is an analvsis of the live weigfhts of 
 the lambs exhibited at Islington ; three to each pen : 
 
 Cotswolds 595 lbs. 
 
 Leicester 558 
 
 Lincoln 616 
 
 South-Downs 525 
 
 Shropshires ...... 451 
 
 Oxfords 460 
 
 Hampshire Downs 672 
 
 And from this list, I deduce the following most 
 important facts : That the Hampshire-Down lambs 
 were superior in weight to all the others, and not 
 
— 50 — 
 
 by a trifling amount either, as the next table will 
 show : 
 
 Weight of Hampshire-Down lambs 
 
 6;72 ft)s = weight of Cotswold lambs -\- ^^j lbs. 
 
 = " " Leicester " +114 '' 
 
 = " " Lincoln " + 56 ^' 
 
 = " " Southdown " + 147 " 
 
 = " " Shropshires " + 221 '' 
 
 = " '' Oxfords " + 212 '* 
 
 And more ; while the Southdown wethers weighed 
 682 ft)s, the Hampshire-Down lambs weighed 672 
 ibs ; the former having only 10 ft)s per pen of three, 
 or 3 J^ R)s each, to show for their twelve month's 
 food ! Again ; we see by the table two Hampshire- 
 Down lambs weighed as much as three Shropshires^ 
 and nearly as much as three Oxfords ! 
 
 Lastly, the pen of three Hampshire-Down lambs 
 exceeded in weight the pen of three Southdown ewes 
 (3 years old) by 56 ft)s ! ! ! The difference between 
 the weight of the Hampshire-Downs and the South- 
 downs I was prepared to see, bat I must confess I 
 was astonished at the amazing superiority of the 
 former over the Shropshires and the Oxfords. 
 Judging from my own past experience of sheep in 
 the state of fatness in which they made their appear- 
 ance at the Smithfield Club Show, I believe I am 
 not wrong in taking 65 % of live weight as the 
 
weight of the four quarters ; which would make their 
 value in the London market, at present prices, ^7.6 
 sterling, or $36.00 i. e. 1882 ! Most of my readers 
 
 know, by this time, that in the English markets^ 
 ^11 cattle, &c. are sold by hand, and the price of 
 
— 5^ — 
 
 mutton is so high now in that country, that a good 
 Down wether weighing, when slaughtered, 20 Sbs a 
 quarter, is worth one shilling sterling a pound, or 
 $20, as he stands. I have no hesitation in saying 
 that as long as prices keep up to what they are now^j 
 no more profitable system of farming can be offered 
 to the Canadian than the breeding and fattening 
 of sheep for exportation, if the sort of sheep suited 
 to the trade of the west-end of London be selected. 
 Hampshire-Downs lambed in March, and modera- 
 tely pushed from weaning, should weigh, by the time 
 the first boat leaves for England in the Spring, 
 something like 12 stones, or 96 ft)s, and would 
 bring in tli-e neighbourhood of twenty-four dollars, 
 and there is only one secret in their management 
 in this country : rape^ rape^ rapc^ from the 20th of 
 June to the end of the season. It would add at 
 least one-third to the yield of our farms. 
 
 Well, now that the Hon. Mr. Cochrane and his 
 son have been good enough, — may I say, owing to 
 my repeated prayers? to import a fair number of 
 ewes, lambs, and rams from the best flocks in En- 
 gland, I think there is a fair prospect of myspecial 
 favourite being, before long, widely known through- 
 out the province ; and they only require to be 
 known to be appreciated. 
 
 As for the original old West-country sheep, 
 whence the Hampshire-Down derive one side at 
 least of their origin, we know pretty well what 
 
— 53 — 
 
 they were like. Some of them had horns ; all were 
 more or less ragged in appearance ; their legs were 
 long and carcase narrow, and the faces and legs 
 white. « These sheep », says Youatt, « not only pre- 
 vailed on the Wiltshire Downs, and were much and 
 deservedly valued there, but were found in consi- 
 derable numbers in North-Devon, Somersetshire, 
 Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire. If they were 
 rather slow in fattening, they were excellent fold- 
 ing sheep, and enabled more grain to be grown in 
 Wiltshire than in any other county in England. 
 In 1837, these Wiltshires have all passed away. » 
 They were crossed again and again with the South- 
 Downs until every trace of the old breed disap- 
 peared, and a useful variety of the Downs remain 
 a very fine flock of which I remember to have seen 
 at Wenvoe Castle, Glamorganshire, the family seat 
 of one of the Jenners. 
 
 At the Oxfordshowof the Royal, 1840, these mo- 
 dified sheep were shown as '« West-country Downs, » 
 and are reported to have been not unlike the pre- 
 sent t^^pe, but smaller, looser in general build, and 
 lighter in colour. 
 
 No doubt the modern refined Hampshire-Down, 
 derives its improved appearance from the cross with 
 Jonas Webb's South-Down rams, effected by the 
 well-known Mr. Humphries, of Oak-Ash, who hired 
 three of the Babraham sheep at 60 guineas ($300.00) 
 each for the season. lyamb-rams were first used by 
 
— 54 — 
 
 the same Mr. Humphries, for service, but with 
 great caution, only 20 ewes being allowed to each 
 lamb, though the number soon rose, as I myself have 
 had nearly 60 ewes served by the same ram-lamb, 
 and almost every one of them « stood •>. The modern 
 Hampshire-Down is the heaviest of the Down breeds, 
 and au reste^ is only excelled by the Lincoln and 
 though rarely, by the Cotswold. 
 
 My own draft ewes, four year-olds, used to weigh 
 somewhere about from 96 to 104 lbs. the four-quar- 
 ters, and that within a month or six weeks after 
 weaning the lambs. Now, Prof. Wrightson will 
 show any one who will visit the College at Down- 
 ton, near Salisbury, ram-lambs that will weigh a 
 hundred pounds the carcase in the month of July ! 
 Lambed in the middle of January, or there abouts, 
 the ram-lambs are commonly sold, for service in 
 August and September, i. e., at seven or eight 
 months old. 
 
 The old-fashioned ugly head of this breed, with 
 its offensively prominent nose, has almost entirely 
 disappeared under the influence of the Sussex cross. 
 The face can hardly be too dark in colour, but the 
 wool must be white ; a dark tinge round the 
 poll is fatal, and the ears must be free from any 
 marbling and rather long, with a tendency to fall 
 outwardly, which gives an air of width to the poll. 
 The head has a good cover of wool both between 
 the ears and on the cheek. As to the fine wool and 
 
— 55 — 
 
 the Roman-nose, they are as clearly hereditary and 
 derived from the old horned sheep, as colour and 
 the quality of the flesh are derived from the South- 
 Down. 
 
 « Knowing the susceptibility of breeders, » says 
 Professor Wrightson, « it may be well to state here 
 that when we refer to the mixed characteristics of 
 the Hampshire-Down, we do not mean to cast any 
 slur upon the breed as it now exists. The Hamp- 
 shire Down has been too long established, and too 
 long bred inter se (within itself), to be now charged 
 with being of mixed origin. Every race of sheep 
 has been crossed, with the exception of the South- 
 down, and possibly the Leicester. » 
 
 No sheep does better within the hurdles than the 
 sheep we are now considering, that is, unlike the 
 Cots wold, he will stand being folded on rape, turnips, 
 &., in large numbers. I remember well the numbers 
 of the Western flocks, as they left the fold, lambs 
 and ewes, on the hilly Downs near Andover. In Kent, 
 Surrey, and other S. E. counties of England, the lot 
 use to go to fold at sunset, on the fallows, and never 
 leave it till the dew was off in the morning ; and 
 with nothing to eat all that time, they had to pick 
 up their living on the downs in the day-time as well 
 as they could. 
 
 The stocking of the down-farms, though, is now 
 very different. Many more sheep are kept on a 
 
-56- 
 
 hundred acres than were kept in my day, for the 
 method of feeding has been entirely changed. Every 
 autumn, I used to go to Bwell or Guildford fair, in 
 Surrey, to buy seventy or eighty three-year-old 
 Hampshire-Down wethers to fatten for the use of my 
 father's household. And such mutton it was ! Now, 
 people have to be contented with tegs^ i. e., 12 to 15 
 months old sheep, but owing to the way in which 
 they have been fed from their early youth, their 
 meat, I am told, is by no means to be despised. But 
 more of this when we come to the feeding of the 
 flock. 
 
 When speaking of the useful properties of the 
 Hampshire-Downs, it must not be forgotten that 
 among them is their value for crossing. The Oxfords, 
 you will remember are the descendants of a Hamp- 
 shire-Down ewe and a Cotswold ram, and all the prize- 
 winners in the cross-bred classes of the Smithfield 
 Club Show in London, have had a Hampshire-Down 
 on one side or the other. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 OXFORDSHIRE-DOWNS 
 
 'phese. in reality middle-wooled sheep, which, for 
 brevity's sake we shall here call « Oxfords », 
 are, as we said at the end of the last chapter, the 
 product of the Hampshire-Down ewe by a Cotswold 
 ram. 
 
 The rule in breeding, as we said in the introduc- 
 tion, is to put the best bred a-top, that is, that the 
 ram should, if there is a distinction between him and 
 the ewe, the higher bred of the two. In this case, no 
 one can doubt that the blood of the Cotswold is more 
 free from foreign alliance than the blood of the 
 Hampshire-Down ; but there is more in this arrange- 
 ment than a question of blood. The Hampshire- 
 Down ewe of the period when the cross was first 
 attempted, 1836 or 1837, was about the best nurse 
 of all the ewes then bred, and that alone must have 
 been sufficient to induce Mr. Samuel Druce, of 
 Eynsham, to select her as the nursing mother of his 
 future flock. 
 
 Mr. Druce's own account of the production of the 
 Oxford by the crossing of Cotswold and Hampshire- 
 
-58- 
 
 Down blood, is worthy of attention. For though 
 he speaks of them as got by a Cotswold ram out of 
 
 a Southdown ewe, it is pretty clear that at that date, 
 1833, the term Southdown included all the Down- 
 breeds from Sussex, through Hampshire, into 
 
— 59 — 
 
 Wiltshire ; in fact this was the case, to my own 
 knowledge, as late as 1840. In his letter to Mr. 
 Philip Pusy. afterwards President of the Royal 
 Agricultural Society, and one of the most practical 
 of all the « gentlemen-farmers » I ever met, it is 
 true Mr. Druce speaks in this loose manner ; but in 
 a subsequent letter, addressed to Mr. W. C. Spooner, 
 he is more precise, and speaks of the cross as fol- 
 lows : « The foundation of this sheep was begun 
 about the year 1833, by using a neat, well-made 
 Cotswold-ram with Hampshire-Down ewes. » Even 
 at that date, the Hampshire-Downs were nothing 
 like what we see nowadays, for it was subsequent to 
 this that Webb's rams were used by ^Ir. Humphrey. 
 They were, probabh', what I recollect them to have 
 been when I first visited the Surrey fairs ; loose- 
 built, Roman-nosed, big, upstanding sheep, with 
 plenty of black about the head, and with no parti- 
 cular merits of form about them ; but hardy-good- 
 doers, carrying a vast amount of lean-meat about 
 them, particularly on the saddle, and good « butchers' 
 sheep », i. e., with plenty of internal fat and heavy 
 pelts. 
 
 The Oxfords were first called by the mixed name, 
 « Down-Cotswolds," but before long acquired their 
 present name of Oxfords ; for the shire has been 
 pretty generally dropped, and so much the better. 
 Not many years ago, the cross in the blood was still 
 easily distinguished by the mottled nose ; indeed, 
 we have seen it in pens of the Oxfords at Mile-End, 
 
— 6o — 
 
 within the last ten years ; but at the last show held 
 there, the muzzles of the Oxfords exhibited were 
 of a uniform brown shade. 
 
 In the early days of the Oxfords the carcase 
 weight of these sheep was thought satisfactory if, 
 at from 13 to 15 months old, it came up to 76 lbs. 
 Prof. Wrightson says that, nowadays, an improved 
 Hampshire-Down, from a good flock, should weigh 
 from 85 to 95 pounds, carcase-weight, at ten 
 months, and that without forcing ; and that at 
 Britford fair, on August 12th, wether lambs are of- 
 ten seen to fetch 60s. ($14.40) a head, he himself 
 having sold 100 on that day, in 1883, for 73s. each- 
 ($17.52) ; but prices for meat, at that date, were 
 higher than they are now, though at present prices 
 a 96 lbs. lamb — more properly teg — would be worth 
 72s. What used to take 13 to 15 months to bring 
 about is now done in 8 or 10, for the modern 
 principle seems to be to feed the land by feeding 
 the sheep, instead of using so much artificials, and 
 the quantity of cake and pulse and grain given to 
 the flock is something that would make the Cul- 
 leys and the Bakewells stare. 
 
Shropshire Shearling-ewes (Hillhurst flock.) 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SHROPSHIRES 
 
 TTtT'HEN first we made acquaintance with the Shrop- 
 shires — Shropshire-Downs they were then 
 called, which w-as a mistake, as there is no such 
 thing as a dozvn in the old county — it was at a 
 farm close to the town of Shrewsbury, the capital 
 of the Shire, belonging to a Mr. Beach, in those days 
 a noted breeder of these sheep, which were then, 
 1852, just beginning to win a high position in the 
 English country exhibitions. 
 
 The history of the Shropshires is rather compli. 
 cated. There are two old breeds on which the pre- 
 sent Shropshires were engrafted. Oddly enough, 
 too, these old breeds are natives of the two extreme 
 points of the West Midlands, Cannock Chase at the 
 eastern, and Clun Forest at the western extremity. 
 
 Several decades ago, there were developed great 
 industries in coal and iron at Wellington, Coalport, 
 and other districts in Shropshire. Wolverhampton, 
 simultaneously, largely increased in population. 
 The demand for mutton and lamb, of course, largely 
 increased at the same time. To meet this demand, 
 
— 62 — 
 
 and to take advantage of it for their own profit, the 
 farmers of Shropshire extended their turnip-and 
 green-crops, and looked further afield for breeding 
 sheep. The native stocks, in short, were not equal 
 to the demand. 
 
 Breeding sheep were sought and bought in the 
 midland and southern counties every autumn for 
 many years, and they were walked to Shropshire and 
 Staffordshire by thousands. Numbers of farmers 
 paid this annual southward visit with this view. 
 The occupier of PatshuU at that time, Colonel Jones, 
 was a pioneer in this movement. Some farmers 
 bought Leicester ewes, others Southdow^n, and others 
 Hants-down (i) ewes. while, according as taste ran for 
 an iacrease of wool, or early maturity was required, 
 so LongwooUed rams were put to Shortwoolled 
 ewes, or the opposite practice was pursued. Thus, 
 Shropshire became filled in the course of time with 
 a large stock of all the best breeds of sheep in En- 
 gland. So much was this the case, that ultimately 
 there was no necessity for the farmers of the West 
 Midlands to turn southwards in search of stock- 
 sheep. There still remained flocks of the old 
 native breeds. Eventually these native breeds and 
 the migrated stocks were brought together. Hence, 
 the want of uniformity in colour, quality, and length 
 of wool that existed thirty or forty years ago. And 
 
 (i) Short or Hampshire ; but the proper name of that shire is; the 
 County of Southampton. 
 
-63- 
 
 hence, too, this breed of sheep, like the Anglo- 
 Saxon race of mankind, is equal to every quality 
 of food, and adapted to almost every climate. 
 
 The stock of the old Cannock Chase sheep has no 
 doubt given this breed the fine dark colour and fine 
 flavour of their flesh. We have been informed that 
 the flock of Beaudesert is the oldest one of this breed 
 which has a recorded history. The quality of their 
 flesh and fat has been celebrated for many years as 
 being more like venison than mutton. So much 
 was this the case that the late Marquis of Anglesea 
 had unlimited standing orders from the distinguished 
 guests who visited him to send quarters, sides, or 
 carcases to noblemen and gentlemen all over the 
 kingdom, and could his agent have produced ten 
 times as many, the demand would not have been 
 supplied. These were somewhat leggy and flat- 
 ribbed sheep, with black points, and some of them 
 had short horns curving prettily upwards. They of 
 course took some time to get fat, and the mutton 
 the noble marquis used to put before his guests was 
 four or five years old. But so much for qualitv. 
 
 Then, there were the shorter-legged and more 
 early maturing stock which had been cultivated in 
 and around Clun Forest. The sheep undoubtedly 
 had — and the old-established flocks still have — a 
 large strain of the Welsh breed. Their contour and 
 walk still show this. The ewes of this breed are 
 bought in large numbers for producing fat lambs 
 
-64- 
 
 near London on the Essex and Herts sides. They 
 are reputed to be the most prolific in yielding milk 
 of any known breed. So well is this reputation 
 established in the districts named, that the farmers 
 do not mind losing ^s. sl head on the ewes when 
 they are sold out fat in the following summer, as 
 they produce such good and early lambs that they 
 make from 35«y. to 455. and 50^. in April and May. 
 Lambs sell best in the London market when « spring- 
 saled » has come him. This is, no doubt, the reason 
 why Shropshire ewes may be justly looked upon as 
 equal to any breed for suckling their lambs. 
 
 It was among these two breeds that the Leicesters 
 and Downs, as above described, were introduced. 
 Of course great want of uniformity and type was the 
 result. Different opinions and tastes on the part of 
 farmers had also much to do with this. Some 
 preferred the old-fashioned mottled face with a South 
 down type, while others liked larger sheep and black 
 points. All this want of uniformity was made more 
 and more conspicuous when the Shropshire breeders 
 prevailed on the Royal Agricultural Society's 
 authorities to appoint separate classes for the Shrop- 
 shire breed of sheep. Judges at shows of course also 
 differed in opinions. One year, two out of the three 
 were in favour of the more Southdown colour and 
 type, while the next year, two were in favour of dark 
 colour and more size, notwithstanding the legs of 
 the sheep were a little longer, and that the latter 
 
- 55- 
 
 required more cake and corn to mature them early, 
 or more time to get them fat in the ordinar>^ way. 
 The advocates of the latter argued, that there were 
 several breeds of small sheep, some of which were 
 deficient of flesh as compared with the fat they 
 produced. Upon this they said «we have in the 
 Shropshires large frames and ample lean of a dark 
 rich colour. The smaller Downlike frames must be 
 discarded, and the larger sizes cultivated. » The 
 results, as seen at the present time, have clearly 
 proved that the latter advocates were right. 
 
 This conflict of opinions and diversity of taste 
 led to warm discussions. It was shown that in 
 more than one instance pure Southdowns had 
 been introduced to flocks of the established Shrop- 
 shire stock. In each instance the flock « went all 
 to pieces, « as it was termed. This was a lesson for 
 the possessors of flocks which has been cultivated 
 for many years on the lines above described. Out 
 of this discussion, too, came the conclusion that 
 dark points of uniform colour, with the largest pos- 
 sible size of frame, were the correct objects to 
 arrive at. The experienced and consistent breeders 
 came to this conclusion among themselves about 
 the time of the « Royal » Battersea show in 1862, 
 and most admirably have they carried it out by 
 their skill in the art of selection. 
 
66 
 
 It may seem odd at first sight to some breeders 
 to read of a uniformity of black or dark faces and 
 
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 SHROPSHIRES RAMS 
 
 legs, when it is allowed or asserted that strains of 
 the white-faced Leicesters have been introduced 
 
-67- 
 
 into the flocks ; but this is just the point which 
 throws a light on two leading features connected 
 with breeding on the skill of the modern flockmas- 
 ter, and on the way animals of a mixed breed will 
 « breed back » from the strains of their ancestors of 
 many generations ago. Take the latter point first : 
 it occasionally happens in the best flocks of Shrop- 
 shires that a lamb appears with a long, wav}', 
 « open » or « watery * fleece. This is a clear indica- 
 tion that Leicester or some other Long-wooled 
 breed w^as introduced to the Shropshire flocks at 
 some remote period. The symptom appears as scro- 
 fula or other blood poisoning does in the third or 
 fourth generation of mankind. The way, however, 
 these « open » coats have been made exceptional 
 brings us back to our first point — viz, the skill of 
 modern flockmasters. When the lamb appears 
 to be a halfbred, with a mottled face, whether it be 
 male or female, it is at once discarded from the 
 flock and fed for the butcher. In this has con. 
 sisted the judgment, care, and skill of the modern 
 breeders of Shropshires, who have brought their 
 flocks to their present state of uniformity. 
 
 There are six or seven leading breeders whose 
 names may be mentioned, as they have been so 
 consistent among themselves that their flocks are 
 nearly all alike in uniformity of type and general 
 character. These are IVIessrs. Crane & Tanner, 
 Shrawardine ; Messrs. Minton, Montford ; ]\Ir. John 
 Evans, Uffingon (all of whom live near Shrews- 
 
— 68 — 
 
 bury). Then, there are Mr. Thomas Mansell, Haring- 
 son, near Shifnal, and his son at Dunmaston, near 
 Bridgenorth ; Mr. W. J. Hock, Sutton Maddock ; 
 and Mr. T. Feen, Downton, who believes in size. 
 Mr. John Darling, Beaudesert, near Rugeley, is now 
 the possessor of the descendants of the Marquis of 
 Anglesea's old Cannock Chase flock above men- 
 tioned and he is showing much spirit in endea- 
 voring to develop it so that it shall be second to 
 none, either in Staffordshire or Shropshire. Mr. 
 Joseph Beach, too. The Hatton, Breewood, near 
 Wolverhampton, inherited a flock that has been 
 bred on the lines settled down upon by the older 
 breeders above mentioned. I remember having a 
 conversation with the late Mr. Joseph Beach some 
 fifteen or sixteen years ago, when he was enthusi- 
 astic in favour of the larger size and uniformity 
 of colour. The way this flock has been proved 
 by selections is alike creditable to father and son. 
 
 It was indeed long before the Shropshires were 
 admitted to the honour of a separate class. I 
 remember well their first appearance in the ring ; 
 it was at the Gloucester show of the Royal, in 1853, 
 but they were then lumped in with other sheep, as 
 « short- wools, not being Southdowns. » According 
 to Prof. Wrightson, it was not till i860 that they 
 were assigned separate classes, the type being then 
 supposed to be fixed, and it was not till they had 
 enjoyed the honour for two years, or so, that the 
 Oxfords and the Hampshire-Downs won the same 
 
-69- 
 
 privilege. iVs a rule, the Shropshires head the list 
 of the sheep classes at the Royal shows, as far as 
 numbers go ; at the Windsor exhibition of the 
 Royal there were of 
 
 Leicesters ....... 41 entries 
 
 Border-Leicesters . 31 " 
 
 Cotswolds 60 " 
 
 Ivincolns 58 " 
 
 Oxfords 82 " 
 
 Shropshires 212 " 
 
 Southdowns 123 " 
 
 Hampshire -Downs 78 " 
 
 In the Royal Agricultural Society's magazine 
 for 1853, in the notice of the show of that year, we 
 find the Shropshires thus described : 
 
 « They have no horns, faces and legs are gray or 
 spotted ; neck thick, with an excellent scrag ; head 
 well shaped, neither small nor large ; breast broad 
 and deep ; back straight, with good carcase ; hind- 
 quarters not so wide as the Southdows ; leg straight, 
 with good bone. They are very hardy, thrive well 
 on moderate keep, and are readily prepared for mar- 
 ket, the tegs weighing on an average from 80 to 
 100 pounds each, the carcase. Thus the Shrop- 
 shire sheep, as contrasted with its mat-ernal ances- 
 tor which grazed on the Longmynd Hills, had 
 during sixty years doubled its dead weight. » Writ- 
 ting in 1858, Prof. Tanner says : « Only a few year? 
 
— 70 — 
 
 since, any mention of the Shropshire-Down sheep 
 raised an enquiry, even among intellectual farmers, 
 as to their character, few knowing anything about 
 them. » How altered is that state of things to-day ! 
 Every one interested in farming, from the plains of 
 Australia to the sea- washed rocks of Gal way, knows 
 the Shropshire ; he is valued everywhere as a tho- 
 roughly trust worthy sheep that will do on poor 
 keep and amply repay his owner for any extra food 
 bestowed upon him ; in fact, if I were not Alexander 
 I would be Diogenes ; that is, if I were farming, and 
 could not get Hampshire-Downs to breed from, I 
 would take up with Shropshires. 
 
 SUFFOLK DOWNS 
 
 Any one travelling through the Eastern counties 
 of England, from London to Norwich, in the early 
 thirties must have observed, unless the deadly 
 dulness of the country sent him to sleep, on the 
 borders between Suffolk and Norfolk, a number of 
 dark-coloured, rough, long-legged sheep feeding 
 about on the barren heaths that border on the two 
 counties. They were the first « wild-sheep », so to 
 speak, I had ever seen, so it is no wonder that, 
 accustomed as I was to the smoother, more 
 comfortable-looking flocks of the Southern coun- 
 ties, the Suffolk Health-sheep should have fixed 
 themselves ineradicably in my mind. How great 
 
— 71 — 
 
 was my astonishment, then, to see by the reports of 
 the Royal's meeting, a few years ago, that these 
 
 SmX^ ___^,.;^>^^i 
 
 -'^^^mm^'"' 
 
 rough, aboriginal sheep, had been so far improved 
 that they had not only been taken up by some of the 
 leading breeders of East-Anglia, but that, owing I 
 
— 72 — 
 
 believe to the exertions of the late Marquis of Bristol, 
 the Suifolk-Down had been admitted to a place in 
 the Royal's annual exhibition. 
 
 Arthur Young, in his tour, mentions these sheep, 
 and from his account it would seem that, as long 
 ago as 1790, they were considered to afford excellent 
 mutton, though the wool can never have been good 
 for much. However, as far as I can learn, not 
 having the flock book at hand, there are six volumes 
 of it extant ; the Southdown has been the great 
 medium of the improvement of the Suffolk ; but 
 whither have the horns vanished ? for horns they 
 certainly had when I saw them 65 years ago. 
 
 The Suffolk Sheep-Society thus describes the 
 Suffolk ; according to the points laid down by the 
 best judges of the district : 
 
 « Head hornless ; face black and long with a 
 reasonably fine muzzle, especially in the ewe ; ears 
 a medium length, black and fine in texture ; eyes 
 bright and full ; neck moderately long and well set 
 on ; shoulders broad and sloping ; chest wide and 
 deep ; back and loin long, level, and well-united ; 
 tail broad and wxU set up ; ribs long and springing 
 well from the spine ; legs and feet straight and black, 
 with fine flat bone ; wooUed down to the knees and 
 hocks ; fleece moderately short. » 
 
 The face of the Suffolk is as black as the Scotch 
 sheep known as the « Black-faced ; » it has no woo 
 
— 73 — 
 
 on the head or between the ears. In my younger 
 days, there was a butcher, named Allen, who lived 
 at the "corner of Mount Street and South-Audley 
 Street, close to Hyde-Park, London, who killed no 
 other sheep than the Suffolk, and made his fortune 
 by them. He had a very traitorous animal in the 
 form of a wether, who used to go with his drover to 
 bring the sheep home from old Smithfield market. 
 Now, all animals have a dislike to enter a 
 slaughter-house on account of the smell of blood ; 
 in order to induce the market-sheep to enter, the 
 wretch used to walk in at the head of the drove, and 
 of course, as sheep always follow their leader, the 
 rest, in perfect innocence, entered the slaughter- 
 house, and when they were all safe inside, the half 
 door was closed ; immediately on hearing the bang of 
 the door, the villain bounded on to the backs of his 
 betrayed friends, jumped over the half-door, and, 
 leaving the other sheep to the mercy of the knife, 
 gravely looked up in the drover's face in expectation 
 of his reward which, in the form of a piece of bread, 
 was awarded him at once. 
 
 A saddle of one of these sheep w^as w^orth eating. 
 
 THE DORSET-HORN 
 
 No one who has ever seen a w^ell-bred Dorset- 
 Horn can mistake a specimen of the breed for any 
 other kind. All other Down sheep have short wool 
 
— 74 — 
 
 and black or brown faces and legs, but in the Dorset 
 we see a survival of a white-faced, horned, sliort- 
 woolled race that may have inhabited the chalk 
 Downs of Dorsetshire for many a hundred years 
 before Caesar landed on the shores of Kent. No 
 doubt the old Wiltshire horned sheep and the 
 Dorset were nearly related ; but the Wiltshire was 
 early crossed with the Southdown until most of its 
 characteristics disappeared, whereas the Dorset, as 
 far as we know, has had no cross at all, but has 
 been brought to its present state of perfection by 
 selection alone. 
 
 Why Dorsets should differ from all other breeds 
 of sheep in the time of their bringing forth their 
 lambs, is a puzzle ; all we can say is that the first 
 breeders of the present stock probably put the ewes 
 to the ram earlier and earlier every year, until it 
 became a habit with them to « seek the male » be- 
 times. For a Dorset ewe will take the ram in 
 April, if she gets a chance, so that parturition will 
 take place in September, and allowing, as we used 
 to allow in England, the lamb to be killable at 
 three months, Christmas and New- Year's tide will 
 not have passed before it will be on the market, and 
 sell, at least it used to sell in our time, for a guinea 
 ($5.00) a quarter. 
 
 The ewes, from what w^e gathered from a butcher 
 who used to kill our sheep on the <' home-farm, » 
 —as the farm is called in England that is kept in 
 
— 75—, 
 
 the landlord's hands for the supply of the house — 
 the Dorset ewes, we say, used to weigh about 
 twelve stones, or 96 lbs., when killed after having 
 borne the last crop of lambs, i. e., at about five 
 years old. 
 
 In 1840, Youatt described the Dorsets as entirely 
 white, the face long and broad, the shoulders low 
 but wide, back straight, chest deep, loins broad, 
 legs longish, and the bone small. They were 
 esteemed good folders, yielding well flavoured mut- 
 ton, and averaging at three years old, from 16 to 
 20 lbs. a quarter. 
 
 What a change has taken place during the last 
 50 years ! In 1890, Mr. John Kidner's first prize 
 wethers, at the Smithfield Club Show, weighed, 
 live weight 224 lbs. each, say, ' 36 lbs. a quarter ; 
 the wool, in 1840, weighed, on the average, 3 }{ 
 lbs. a fleece, whereas, now, the fleeces of the ewe 
 flock will run from 5 to 6 pounds, and of the rams 
 from 8 to 12 lbs, these weights being taken after 
 the fleece has been washed on the sheep's back. 
 
 « Dorset ewes are capital mothers, and more pro- 
 lific than any other breed of sheep. They will 
 take the ram at almost any season, and if well fed 
 before the time of copulation, will often bring two 
 and not very rarely three at a birth. Very few of 
 the rames survive their lamb-hood, but, according 
 to the invariable practice in England, they are almost 
 
-76- 
 
 all castrated ten days or so after birth ; but we must 
 make one exception to the general rule : the Hamp- 
 shire men used, in our time, to leave the male lambs 
 as nature built them till the month of August, 
 when the operation was performed, and happy is the 
 man who visited the county in those days, for he 
 stood a chance, at any of the country inns, of tasting 
 that delicous dish emphatically designated " lamb's 
 fry)) not the liver, &c., but the « orchids. » We 
 dined off it, we remember at Wallingford, the day 
 Andover won the Derby : in 1854, if our memory 
 serves us. 
 
 There used to be plenty of Dorsets in the Isle of 
 Wight, whence come the early supplies of lamb for 
 the London market ; Ireland has a good many, and, 
 of late, several consignments have been received in 
 Ontario, Mr. William Rolph being the chief impor- 
 ter. In 1889, Mr. T. S. Cooper, of Pennsylvania, 
 landed 153 Dorsets, including all the first-prize 
 winners of the Royal show of that year. 
 
 The earliest, or house-lambs as they are called, 
 are treated in a peculiar way. A barn is set apart 
 for the purpose of rearing them, and no expense is 
 Spared. The building is divided into '< Coops », in 
 which the lambs are kept in separate lots according 
 to their ages. Ever}' evening, the ewes are turned 
 into their young ones who speedily recognise each 
 its own dam. After passing the night together, the 
 ewes are sent to a fold of rape or turnips in the 
 
— 11 — 
 
 morning, after the dew is o^. About ten o'clock, 
 the ewes whose lambs have been sold, are driven 
 into the barn, and held while the other ewes lambs 
 empty their udders. At noon, the real mothers are 
 driven into the lambs again for an hour or two, and 
 at four the poor foster-mothers are again drained. 
 We were told, many years ago, by a skilful practi- 
 tioner of this plan, that the grand secret of success 
 is to keep the barn at a regular temperature, any 
 material variation of temperature, particularly up- 
 wards, being always attended by a serious loss of 
 life among the lambs. 
 
 Of course, there are a multitude of other breeds of 
 sheep besides those we, wath the assistance of pro- 
 fessor Wrightson, have tried to describe, but as they 
 are chiefly local, and by no means likely to be met 
 with in this province, we do not think it necessary 
 to enlarge upon their characteristics. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 MANAGEMENT OF THE FLOCK 
 
 Tt may be laid down, as a general rule, that in the 
 Province of Quebec every farmer, that keeps 
 sheep at all, breeds his own. In England, we may 
 say en passant^ it is not the case ; many farmers, 
 especially in the hilly district of the north, breed 
 from large flocks of ewes, but as they never keep male 
 lambs after the month of September, it is clear that 
 other farmers, those who buy their lambs, do not 
 breed but feed. And the same is the practice in the 
 Down counties ; in Sussex, Hampshire, Wiltshire, 
 &c., hundreds of thousands of well-bred wether 
 lambs are to be met with at the Autumn fairs, the 
 breeders only retaining the ewe lambs to refresh the 
 flocks when the older ewes are drafted, generally at 
 the age of four or five years. These the farmers of 
 the turnip lands buy and fatten, after taking one 
 crop of lambs from them. 
 
 But, here, it is not so. In the great majority of 
 instances, what does one find to be the custom as 
 regards sheep-breeding ? We regret to say that if 
 there is any animal on the farm that may be said to 
 be neglected, it is that valuable animal, the sheep. 
 
— 79 — 
 
 Originally, yes, up to very late times, sheep were 
 kept in this province for the sake of their fleece ; as 
 for the meat they afforded, that was quite a thing 
 that did not matter ; it was used somehow or other 
 in the farm-house, or perhaps a few lambs were sold 
 to the butcher ; but what lambs ? Puny things that 
 were never fattened, that, at best, weighed twenty 
 pounds or so the carcase ; how should they w^eigh 
 more, when the ewe herself had to live on what she 
 could pick up in the corners of the field, in the bush, 
 and on that pasture, ox pacage^ to be found on the 
 stubbles after three years successive grain-crops? 
 Did the ewes die of old age, or w^hat became of 
 them? At all events, if they proved barren and 
 were killed, who could have eaten their flesh ; as for 
 fat, it was non-extant ! Still it goes on ; every fall 
 we see, under our wdndows in Sherbrooke street, 
 troops of lambs, on their road to the butcher's 
 pastures ; ram-lambs, almost invariably, with their 
 tails uncut and their orchids where nature placed 
 them ! 
 
 Again ; what is the meaning of this tendency to 
 put ewe-lambs, perhaps not more than six or seven 
 months old, to the ram ? We remember well when 
 we expressed surprise to Mr. Mark Dawes, of 
 Lower Lachine, at his following up this practice, 
 that his reply wal : « Oh ! it would not pay to keep 
 them a whole year doing nothing. » If ample 
 frames are to be perpetuated, females of all breeds 
 or races must be allowed time to mature those 
 
— 8o — 
 
 frames, before being oblig-ed to submit to the pains 
 of travail, after having had to support another indi- 
 vidual for the five months of gestation. 
 
 Consequently, it is not consonant with the laws 
 of breeding to put ewes to the ram before they 
 have obtained the age of eighteen months, so that 
 they may bring forth for the first time when about 
 two years old. Not very many years ago, it was the 
 practice in England to postpone the first parturition 
 of the ewe till she attained the age of three years ; 
 but that was in the days when ewes were allowed 
 to get along as they could ; now that ewes are care- 
 fully treated and well fed, the universal practice in 
 all that country is to put the ewe to the ram at the 
 age we have indicated. 
 
 And, now, let us consider how we are to celebrate 
 the nuptials of the ew^e and her mate : any how ? 
 By no means. Several questions have to be asked, 
 and answered, before we can decide. 
 
 First, do we want our flock to produce lambs 
 that shall be an improvement of themselves in 
 frame or fleece, or in both ? If so, it behoves us to 
 be very careful in the selection of the ram. If the 
 fleece of the ewe has a tendency to be loose and 
 open, select a ram with a close wool. Should the 
 ewe fall off too rapidly from the rump, choose a 
 ram whose rump continues level as far as possible 
 towards the setting-on of the tail. In fact, not to 
 
delay our readers too long over this matter, select a 
 ram 'that will correct the faults perceptible in your 
 ewes. As for the age of the ram, that will depend 
 entirely on circumstances. If bred by a man who 
 knows his business, and well-fed from its earliest 
 days, there is no earthly reason why a ram-lamb of 
 from seven to eight months old should not perform 
 the functions of its office for, at any rate, 40 ewes. 
 The practice is common in all the improved Hamp- 
 shire-Down flocks of to-day as it was in simular 
 flocks in 1850, and if the continuous practice of 
 50 years among the best breeders of sheep in 
 England is not enough to warrant its soundness, 
 we cannot see what is enough. 
 
 Do you want your ewes to drop twins ? Well, it 
 is not to be done by keeping them on short rations ; 
 they must be prepared for the service of the ram by 
 careful feeding for at least three weeks or a month 
 beforehand, and the best food for that purpose is 
 rape. 
 
 How many ewes should be assigned to one ram ? 
 That, again, depends upon the age of the ram. A 
 well fed shearling ram can easily serve 60 ewes. 
 Now, it is a matter of great importance that the 
 time of service should extend over as short a period 
 of time as possible ; and, for this reason, the shorter 
 will be the time from the first lamb dropped to the 
 last ; and if every sheep-breeder had attended the 
 6 
 
— 82 — 
 
 nightly lambing fold for five weeks, as we did in 
 1853, when, for what reason we know not, our ewes 
 occupied all that time in getting through their 
 work, they would spare no pains in shortening 
 their weary labour. 
 
 There is one method by which the time of service 
 may be prevented from extending over too long a 
 period : use a teaser. A teaser is either an old 
 worn-out ram, or a ram-lamb — the latter for choice — 
 that is turned among the ewes but is prevented from 
 service by a piece of sacking sewn on to the wool 
 of his shoulders and extending so far down between 
 his legs that his amatory propensities are baulked. 
 Cruel, of course, but effective. The poor thing 
 wanders about among the ewes, exciting their 
 passions,and that so effectively that, when the Sultan 
 himself is introduced into their society, the amiable 
 creatures submit to his embraces without reluct- 
 ance, and many services in the first four-and-twenty 
 hours are the result, 25 not being an uncommon 
 number. 
 
 As it is highly desirable that the ram be not 
 exhausted by his arduous, we were always accus- 
 tomed to put the ram with the ewes at about 4 
 o'clock in the afternoon ; he remained with them 
 all night, and at 8 o'clock in the morning he was 
 removed to a small hurdled off space, away from 
 his spouses, where he was well fed on cake, grain, 
 and pease, with a little green-meat — clover, vetches. 
 
-83- 
 
 &c., — and restored to his sultanas at 4 p. m. as 
 before. 
 
 In order to know what ewes have been served, the 
 ram should be smeared, on the brisket, night and 
 morning, with « ruddle », scientifically called « sesqui- 
 oxide of iron », and all the ewes that have the red on 
 their backs should be drafted into another field. In 
 about three weeks, those that have not stood to the 
 service will return, as it is called, when the ram 
 should be re-introduced to them, and that will end 
 his labours for the season. 
 
 And how shall we divide our flock of ewes ? In 
 accordance with their age, of course. Those that 
 have already given birth to lambs will, or ought to 
 go in one lot, those that are pregnant for the first 
 time in another, and for this reason : the elder 
 females must of necessity be fairly well kept during 
 the winter, but the first year's ewes must be kept 
 still better. Not, by any means, that they should, 
 either of them, be made fat, for besides the fact that 
 fat ewes almost invariably produce small lambs, we 
 must not forget that the parturition of fat females 
 of every description of stock, as well as of human 
 beings, is always attended with danger. Keep the 
 ewes, then, in good condition, but not too full fed. 
 A little clover-hay, some pease-haulm, a few oats, 
 and water at command, will see them safelv through 
 the winter. 
 
-84- 
 
 In England, at least in the parts of England with 
 which we are best acquainted, it is not the custom 
 of shepherds and others connected with the breed- 
 ing of sheep to talk of a two-year-old or three-year- 
 old, but the age of a sheep is mentioned as con- 
 nected with its teeth, as thus : 
 
 A teg, in some parts a hog or hoggett, is a year- 
 ling sheep before it is shorn. A two-tooth is a 
 sheep from 12 to 15 months old until it, at 22 to 
 24 months, puts up another pair, when it becomes 
 a four-tooth sheep. 
 
 At three years, it becomes a six-tooth, and at four 
 a full-mouthed, with all its eight teeth complete. 
 However, though this is a tolerably accurate ac- 
 count of the dentition of the sheep, it varies consi- 
 derably from various causes. When a sheep begins 
 to lose its teeth we used to call it a « broken-mouth » ; 
 in Cambridgeshire, a ewe that has lost teeth goes 
 by the name « a crone », but in all well managed 
 flocks it has long ceased to be the habit to keep 
 ewes after the third crop of lambs ; they are either 
 fattened off by their proprietor, or else sold to the 
 farmers of the non-breeding districts at the autumn 
 fairs. 
 
 We should have mentioned that the reason why 
 some farmers of apparently equally good soils do 
 not breed sheep, but prefer buying from others 
 that do not, to all appearances, occupy preferable 
 
-85- 
 
 farms, admits of a very clear definition : a farm, 
 even all soils on any one farm, may not be suitable 
 for sheep-breeding, but will fatten sheep very prof- 
 itably. A very costly experience taught us this 
 lesson, and we have never forgotten it : many years 
 ago, in England, we took a farm of between three 
 and four hundred acres, and invested a large sum of 
 money in the purchase of ewes to stock it with ; for 
 it lay in a lovely exposure towards the south, and 
 looked to be the very spot for breeding early lambs, 
 more particularly as it had a chalk substratum under 
 the whole it. The ewes lambed in the spring — lots of 
 lambs, — but an overwhelming proportion of them 
 were dead in their mother's womb ; not only that, 
 but eighty-five of the ewes died too ; that is thirty 
 per cent of the flock ! And the only consolation we 
 got w^as a question from one of our amiable neigh- 
 bours : « Did no one tell you that on that farm the 
 ewes always lost their lambs ? » No one told us 
 anything about it, or we should have done what we 
 did afterwards, i. e., fattened o£F our ewes that were 
 left and never bred another lamb on that farm. 
 
 A few turnips, or mangels, will do the ew^es no 
 harm, if the quantity is limited to five or six pounds a 
 head daily, but beware of giving too many swedes, — 
 a nasty experience of ours again — andjmangel-/^<^z/^5 
 are said to be dangerous for in-lamb ewes, though 
 why they are so we do not see. The great thing is 
 to get the ewes to eat food that contains plenty of 
 nitrogen J such as clover-hay, pease-haul ui, a few 
 
— 86 — 
 
 pease as well, and a trifle of linseed-cake, commonly 
 called oil-meal^ which will tend to keep the bowels 
 open, and produce a comfortable, satisfied feeling 
 all over the ewe's body. Of course, we should prefer 
 giving the seed of flax, crushed and mixed with 
 chaffed oat or other straw ; but that will come with 
 time ; at present, farmers have no linseed bruisers, 
 and if the seed is ground between the stones, too 
 much of the oil will be wasted, unless the seed is 
 mixed with a large proportion of grain of other 
 kinds, and that is not only troublesome, but renders 
 it necessary to give a greater quantity of expensive 
 food than need be. (i) 
 
 Sheep, just off the grass, do not care to eat dry 
 food, such as chaff whether of hay or of straw ; but 
 as soon as the frosty mornings arrive, they will run 
 to their troughs to see what they contain, and their 
 breakfast will not detain them long. 
 
 We cannot bear to see the little pains taken here, 
 as a general rule, to preserve that valuable food, 
 peases-traw or haulm. If the crop is not allowed to 
 stand too long before being cut, and is carried 
 without rain, pease-straw is, in our opinion, more 
 valuable than timothy-hay, at least for sheep. But 
 it must not be forgotten that, like hay made of 
 
 (i) The fact that, out of loo grains of flaxseed, given to cattle or 
 sheep uncrushed, at least 80 will be passed undigested in the faces, 
 should deter farmers from wasting such valuable food. 
 
-87- 
 
 vetches, one shower of rain on pease-haulm comp- 
 aratively speaking spoils it, especially if it is not 
 thoroughly dry before it is put into the barn. 
 
 It is astonishing how much cold sheep will bear 
 provided their coats are free from wet. Good sheds 
 
 A MODEL SHEEP RACK. 
 
 will of course be provided for the ewes, and they need 
 not be absolutely closed, as sheep will prefer lying 
 about in the yard attached to the sheds even in very 
 cold weather. Troughs, and roomy ones, for grain 
 
— 88 — 
 
 and chaff, should be numerous, but any common 
 wood will serve for their manufacture. Pity that 
 pease-haulm cannot be chaffed, but the quantity of 
 sand and small grit, that is usually carried into the 
 barn with it, blunts the knives of the chaff-cutter 
 and renders the job not only tedious but expensive. 
 A very useful rack invented by the well-known 
 M. Eugene Casgrain is represented in the engrav- 
 ing : the following is a description of it, from the 
 original in i^^ Journal cP Agriculture : 
 
 « This rack is circular, and is made of two ranks 
 of bars, with a hollow receptacle in the middle, in 
 which is placed a cone, which makes the fodder 
 thrown into it spread all around equally. 
 
 « The rack is 5 ^ feet in diameter and 4 ^ feet 
 high. There are twenty-two bars in the exterior 
 rank, so that the same number of sheep can 
 feed at the rack at once. The bars are i j4 inch in 
 diameter, round, and so inserted in the sockets that 
 they can easily be turned round and round. There 
 is an interval of 7 inches between the exterior and 
 the interior bars ; the laiter are twenty-three in 
 number, one inch through, and 4 inches apart. 
 Within the interior rank of bars is a wooden cone, 
 3 feet high, and 3^ feet in diameter at the base. 
 This cone, with the tackle that fastens the bars to 
 the top of the rack, forms the receptacle for the 
 fodder. A sort of raised shelf, three inches wide> 
 is fastened to the top and bottom of the rack, around 
 the outer rank of bars, and completes the whole. 
 
- 89 - 
 
 « The advantages of this rack are these : its circular 
 shape gives each sheep its own place without annoy- 
 ance to his neighbours. For it is evident that the}^ 
 only approach one another as regards their heads, 
 and the further one looks towards their hind-quar- 
 ters, the more distant does each sheep get from his 
 neiofhbours. This arranofement secure ewe-lambs 
 and the in-lamb ewes from being hurt by being 
 jostled by others. The bars of the outer range 
 moving easily prevent the sheep from rubbing the 
 wool off their necks. If the ewes pass alongside of 
 the bars in a hurry, their mobility in the sockets 
 prevents the eA^es from being hurt. If the precaution 
 is taken of placing the rack under a trap-door in 
 the floor of the hay-loft, no rubbish can fall on the 
 fleece of the sheep, which is thus kept perfectly 
 clean. If, instead of fodder, roots are given to the 
 sheep, the bottom of the rack, with its 3 inch wide 
 shelf, is there ready to receive the roots. The 
 interior bars are near enough together to prevent 
 the sheep from pulling out the hay or other fodder 
 and trampling it under foot ; and the distance 
 between the bars, four inches, will not allow them 
 to drag it out except mouthful by mouthful. 
 
 (( x\n extra prize was awarded to this rack at the 
 exhibition held at Montreal in the year 1883, and 
 we think it well worthy of being reproduced here. » 
 
 Notes. Don't feed your ewes, in winter, well one 
 day and give them half rations the next : they will 
 
— 90 — 
 
 very likely gorge themselves the third day and 
 perhaps abort : we have heard of such things hap- 
 pening. 
 
 We see in some of our exchanges that it has 
 become a not uncommon thing to shear the lambs 
 in the late fall : a dangerous practice with the ewe- 
 tegs, for it is reported to us that many have died 
 from the deprivation of their warm coat. 
 
 A dog in the ewes' premises should be shot at 
 once ; he has clearly no business there. He may not 
 have come to kill, but his presence is enough to 
 frighten the ewes out of their small wits, and but 
 too likely lamb-slipping follows, though the ewe may 
 go nearly up to her time. 
 
 For goodness sake don't let your in-lamb ewes 
 wander about loose in the deep snow in February 
 and March, at any time indeed. How often do we 
 see ewes heavy in lamb in the road near the farm- 
 house ; a sleigh passes, the ewes take fright, dart to 
 the side of the road, plunge into the untrodden 
 snow in the ditch, and, unless the man in the sleigh 
 is merciful and helps the poor thing, her funeral 
 peal will soon be ringing. 
 
 By the bye, we forgot to say, but every sheep- 
 breeder knows it already, that a ewe goes 5 calendar 
 months with lamb, say 22 weeks, on the average. 
 
 For goodness sake 4on't grudge sheep in regard 
 
— 91 — 
 
 to litter : a dry bed is everything for a sheep of any 
 kind, how much more then is it needed by the in- 
 lamb ewe ! 
 
 When do you intend to have your ewes lamb- 
 down ? That you must arrange according to cir- 
 cumstances, remembering one thing : ewes that have 
 been accustomed, for their first two pregnancies, to 
 lamb in April, will not, because you put the ram 
 with them in August, oblige you by taking him at 
 once ; the odds are, that if you do so, the ewes will 
 come into season one by one, the general impreg- 
 nation lasting very likely five weeks, to say nothing 
 of the bother of those who « return • . You will not 
 neither will your shepherd — if you keep one — find 
 five or six weeks attendance, o'nights, in the lamb- 
 ing shed by any means pleasant. We always attended 
 to our ewes ourselves, though we had a first-rate 
 Sussex shepherd, and the climate in which we 
 then farmed w^as by no means so stern as that of the 
 province of Quebec. 
 
 A very sensible piece of advice is given by Mr. 
 Casgrain, refering to the danger incurred by the 
 ewes in jostling one the other in going through the 
 door of the lambing-shed. He recommends that 
 the sill should be raised fifteen inches above the 
 floor, and that there should be no approach to it 
 except by a little bridge, without rails, only wide 
 enough for two sheep to pass at once ; the exit of 
 
— 92 — 
 
 the ewes will take up more time if thus arranged, 
 but it will not be so likely to cause accidents. 
 
 Prof. Wrightson says, with perfect reason, that 
 (( with half a pound of hay and ten or twelve pounds 
 (i) of turnips,ewes during pregnancy require no cake 
 or other expensive food. True ; but that would not 
 suit ewes in this country and climate ; for the ewes 
 he speaks of lambed in early January, and in fortun- 
 ate Southern England there is a good bite for them 
 in the meadows and on the Downs, all the time of 
 their pregnancy. Here, we have no such advantage, 
 the trifle of cake a day we recommend, 4 oz. a head, 
 will not cost much, and the outlay will be well 
 repaid by the good state of health it will help to 
 ensure to the ewes. 
 
 Mr. Casgrain does not approve of the litter and 
 dung, &c., being allowed to accumulate for months 
 under the sheep, as, he says, is the practice of many 
 farmers, and therein we agree with him, though in 
 the severer months of winter no deleterious emana- 
 tions can possibly escape from the bedding. (2) But 
 he oroes on to sav, that "the fresh manure will be 
 better ; » how it can be better that the other when 
 the other has lost none of its good qualities, we do 
 not see. 
 
 (i) But, as we observed before, beware of too many turnips. 
 
 (2) The pressure of the weight of the sheep will prevent any 
 heating, 
 
— 93 — 
 
 But we must uot forget the case of the yearling 
 ewes, just now in lamb for the first time. These 
 will of course require better keep than the older 
 ones, as will also the tegs, or lambs of the year. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DRAFTING THE FLOCK 
 
 ^he first operation after the lambs are weaned and 
 the ewes are preparing for the introduction to 
 married life, is the drafting of the flock. This, if 
 you want your flock to gain any place at exhibitions, 
 sales, <S:c., must be carried out in the most hard- 
 hearted manner. But of, say, 60 ewes there will 
 probably be 
 
 16 two -tooths. 
 
 16 four-tooths. 
 
 16 six-tooths. 
 
 14 full-mouthed, and older 
 
 60 
 
 and you will have no difficulty in finding among 
 them at least a dozen which, for one reason or 
 another, are not worth retaining in the flock. Of 
 the older ewes, that is, of those who are over four- 
 years old, some will be what is technically called 
 •t broken-mouthed » or « crones », i. e., those that have 
 lost one or more teeth ; others will have shown 
 signs of losing their wool ; here, will be one that 
 
— 95 — 
 
 had not sufficient milk to supply the wants of its 
 last lamb, &c., &c. Of the younger ewes, there 
 will be some whose form is not what it should be ; 
 a weak neck in one, flat ribs in another, a weak 
 loin in a third, Sec, will cause them to be discarded. 
 
 Then comes the selection of the young ewes to 
 supply the place of the discarded in the follo^snng 
 season ; and after all this work of selection is over 
 and done with, we have to go to work in the most 
 important of all, the choice of 
 
 THE RAM. 
 
 Says Prof. \Vrightson,speaking of the father of the 
 flock : (( A good and improving flock of ewes, mated 
 with rams likely to still further correct their weak 
 points and produce ewe-lambs which will again add 
 to the reputation of the flock, is of the greatest 
 importance.)) 
 
 « Rams must be bought with the strictest eye to 
 personnal merit. Success does not depend upon 
 price, but upon securing good sheep. Go to the 
 sales of the best flocks, but back your own opinion . . 
 A breeder will always find it expedient to be a buyer 
 but he should always retain one or two of his own 
 ram-lambs for service in his own flock, remember- 
 ing, that it is not advisable to put them to ewes too 
 near in consanguinity. » Did we mention that Jonas 
 Webb once told us he never mated ram and ewe 
 nearer than sixth-cousins. 
 
-96 - 
 
 Notes : Mate strong ewes with rams of a more 
 refined character, and the reverse. 
 
 A light-coloured ram should be mated with dark 
 ewes. 
 
 If a preponderant fault of your ewes is want of 
 width, or lean neck, or scanty legs, put them to a 
 stout ram, with strong scrag and well-rounded «legs 
 of mutton. » 
 
 Rape for a fortnight or three weeks before coup- 
 ling will bring the ewes into humour for the ram. 
 
 Prof. Wrightson's plan is this : after the ewes have 
 all been served, he puts one ram with the whole lot 
 of them so that those ewes that « return • may be 
 served again. That the number of twins depends a 
 great deal on management, is clear from the fact 
 that some breeders invariably have a much heavier 
 crop of lambs than others. Of course, as the rape 
 treatment is the almost invariable practice of the 
 great breeders of Essex, Cambridgeshire, &c., and 
 was always resorted to by those leading flock- 
 masters, the four brothers Webb, Sam. Jonas of 
 Ickleton, John Clayden of Littlebury, and the like, 
 it is clearly not a fantasy. 
 
 Some farmers in this province have told me that 
 they would rather have their ewes drop singles than 
 twins. Well, if they grudge a little extra food, and 
 the trouble of keeping these ewes and their twins 
 
— 97 — 
 
 apart from the ewes with singles, I have nothing 
 to say about it ; but I should be glad to know how 
 they treat a ewe that has lost her solitary lamb ? 
 Milk her and make the milk into cheese, we sup- 
 pose ! If a ewe is properly fed, she can nurse two 
 lambs without drawing too much on her fund of life. 
 We never saw many ewes in the districts round 
 Joliette, or in those round St. Hyacinthe, but the 
 small flocks in those parts always seemed to us to 
 be kept for no definite purpose, but rather because 
 it was the custom to keep sheep and the owners did, 
 as their neighbours were in the habit of doing. It 
 is full time, now that mutton is of such great value 
 in our foreign market, the last report from London 
 quoting « Shorthorns, 4s. 6d. per 8 lbs — Southdowns, 
 6s. » or, in our currency, and by the pound, 13^ 
 cents and 18 cents — that our people should look 
 about them. 
 
 DIPPING 
 
 Our general practice here is for our ewes to lamb- 
 down so late in the spring that there is not much 
 danger of the foetus being injured in the operation ; 
 for the early part of September is about the best 
 time for dipping ewes, and then the services of the 
 ram has not, in nine cases out of ten, been put into 
 requisition. In my time. Bigg's composition was 
 the favorite sheep-dip, but the late lamented Sir 
 
John Lawes brouglit out one quite as good towards 
 the latter end of his useful life. Mr. Henry Gray, 
 druggist, of St-Ivawrence Main-Street, Montreal, has 
 my notion of what a sheep-dip ought to be, and I 
 can conscientiously recommend my readers to apply 
 to him when in need of the materials. 
 
 The best time fordipping, in my opinion, is just 
 after harvest — say, the end of August — and the 
 lambs, all of whom should be weaned by that date, 
 should be dipped at the same time. 
 
 Sheep are dipped for two reasons : first, to kill 
 ticks ; secondly, to clean and promote the healthi- 
 ness of the skin. It is, I hear, a common practice 
 in England nowadays to dip sheep twice a year. In 
 my time, once was considered sufficient, and as I 
 never tried the second dipping I cannot speak of 
 its effects from experience ; but the English flock- 
 masters know ; they are not given to waste time or 
 money, and if they do it, their example in this, as 
 well as in other things, is a pretty safe one to 
 follow. 
 
 Notes or points. A sheep's head, here, is not worth 
 much, except in large towns, where there are plent)' 
 of Scots, and people that, like ourselves, who have 
 been a good deal in Scotland, have learnt to like a 
 tup's « head » converted into soup with plenty of 
 onions, celery, carrots, and pearl-barley. And yet 
 that very member, if it is perfect, or even fairly 
 
— 99 — 
 
 good, will add many a dollar to the selling price of 
 a ram. 
 
 When I went to live with the great Southdown 
 breeder, Wm. Rigden, to study his flock, he was 
 deeply interested in the improvement of the necks 
 of his sheep. He succeeded in his design, in about 
 three years, by selecting a ram every year from the 
 Babraham lot, which shone especially in that 
 member. 
 
 Width over the crops, great girth, and thickness 
 through the heart are all important. These cannot 
 be given in a picture ; but study the Hampshire- 
 Downs, the Southdowns, and the Shropshires, at 
 the next Provincial Show, and you will see what 
 they indicate ; among other things they are almost 
 infallible signs of a good digestion. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 LAMBING TIME 
 
 ^he time is at hand I hope, when we shall see, 
 under the care of shepherds, flocks of sheep 
 carefully looked after, and fed during the whole of 
 the summer on green-crops grown expressly for 
 their consumption. I cannot conceive of any 
 other means of restoring the fertility of the worn-out 
 farms so common in some parts of the province. 
 Sheep, even when the flock is small, pay their 
 owner, for if they did not, we should not see so 
 many let out on shares. But kept, as they ought to 
 be, on the land, (i) from May to December, they will 
 not only yield the ordinary retarn of a lamb and a 
 fleece, but they will at least double the production 
 of the farm. 
 
 As I said before, two things are specially to be 
 sought for : twins, and a general lambing in the 
 shortest possible period. 
 
 You may think yourself very fortunate if you have 
 secured a good shepherd. I had one and only 
 
 (i) That is, no allowed to lie about in the bush or in 
 the ditches, where their droppings will be wasted. 
 
lOI 
 
 one, but he was a phenomenon ; he knew person- 
 ally every ewe in the flock, its descent, and when 
 it was due to lamb ; he knew how to assist it when 
 it needed help, but he always let it alone when 
 assistance was unnecessary ; he never wasted the 
 food set apart for the ewes, knew how to care 
 for a sick ewe, how to rear a lamb that has lost its 
 mother, and how to induce a ewe, with a single 
 lamb, that had lots of milk, to act as foster-mother 
 to a lamb whose dam had not enough. One never 
 heard, in those days, in my lambing-shed, the baa- 
 ing of ewes and lambs that had lost one another ; 
 his watchful care never grew slack, and during the 
 time he was in my service, he discharged his duty 
 like a man. 
 
 The number of ewes a ram can serve depends 
 upon circumstances. A Hampshire-Down lamb-ram, 
 8 months old, can manage without trouble from 30 
 to 40 ; a shearling of any breed from 70 to 80. A 
 Southdown shearling I hired from Jonas Webb 
 served no ewes, but they were young and vigorous, 
 in full condition, and great pains were taken by the 
 shepherd to keep the ram well fed and to give him 
 plenty of rest in the early mornings. To the best 
 of my recollection, all but 25 of them gave twins, 
 and one especial night I well remember, in which 
 20 ewes presented me with 39 lambs ! 
 
 The Hampshire men prefer lamb-rams ; but their 
 ewes lamb so early, about the middle of January, 
 
I02 
 
 and are so well fed, that their lambs are as strong 
 in the months of August and September as are the 
 shearlings — 2 tooth's — (Ungrammatical ; but such 
 is the technical form) — of other breeds. 
 
 As I said before, the ram should be put into a 
 small lot, with one ewe with him to keep him quiet, 
 and be fed freely with any food he seems to prefer ; 
 if he is thus kept away from the rest of the ewes 
 for a couple of hours twice a day, it will be all the 
 better for his service, as when he is allowed to run 
 day and night with the ewes, he is so attentive to 
 his duties that he will not give himself time to eat. 
 
 At the end of a fortnight, most of the ewes will 
 have been served, indeed, if properly treated, every 
 one of them. 
 
 Ewes that are too fat, almost invariably give birth 
 to small lambs ; sometimes, they suffer from inflam- 
 mation of the womb in lambing ; therefore, while 
 keeping your ewes in good condition during preg- 
 nancy, don't let them get too fat. On the other 
 hand, ewes that are too poor cannot nourish the 
 foetus well, die of weakness if the lambing is difficult, 
 lose their wool, and starve their lambs ; so, don't let 
 your in-lamb ewes suffer from hunger. 
 
 As I remarked before, in sheep, as well as in 
 all kinds of horned stock, a trifle of oil-cake or 
 crushed linseed has a marvellous effect in easing the 
 
— I03 — 
 
 pangs of maternity ; and as it is so, no one should 
 grudge his ewes a quarter pound of cake a day for 
 a fortnight before and a fortnight after lambing ; 
 the cost will be a mere bagatelle compared with the 
 benefits conferred. 
 
 Patient darlings ! how mildly and sweetly do they 
 give themselves up to the tender care of the shep- 
 herd, when the labour is hard ! It is worth any 
 one's while, whether he is a breeder or not, to 
 watch a flock of ew^es in the lambing-shed. He 
 will never again believe that « We have no duties 
 whatever to discharge towards animals », unless he 
 is utterly devoid of all sympathetic feelings. 
 
 Mind that your ewes are kept perfectly undisturb- 
 ed. The sudden apparition of a stranger may so 
 terrify them that irreparable damage may be caused 
 in a minute. Ewes can stand a good deal of cold, 
 as can the lambs, but beware of a wet fleece. Open 
 lambing-sheds answer very well ; in fact, we prefer 
 them to close sheds ; but there should be means 
 provided to compel the ewes to keep under cover 
 when it rains, for, in very truth, amiable as they are, 
 sheep « have not got sense enough to come in when 
 it rains. » 
 
 You wdll soon learn to distinguish from the others 
 the ewe that is at the point of labour. The parts 
 beneath the tail begin to grow red and swollen ; 
 she seems ill at ease, she wanders hither and thither i 
 
— I04 — 
 
 tries to get away from her sisters. In fact, she gets 
 what would be called among men « fidgety », taking 
 a great interest in the lambs of the other ewes, even 
 trying to appropriate them. Then, the bag of liquid 
 protrudes itself from the womb, and, if the present- 
 ation is a natural one, the two fore-feet of the lamb, 
 with its muzzle resting upon them. The ewe shifts 
 her position from time to time, gets up on her feet, 
 lies down again, making many an effort to rid 
 herself of her burden. Now is the time when, if 
 the ewe seems weak, the shepherd's services may be 
 of use : drawing the legs of the lamb towards him as 
 gently as possible, and freeing the forehead from the 
 pressure of the vagina with his fingers, he pulls the 
 legs softly, in a downward direction, being careful to 
 time his pulls with the efforts of the ewe. He must 
 never pull between the pains, for unexpected aid 
 always surprises the ewe, and makes her neglect to 
 aid herself. 
 
 When the lamb has been successfully brought to 
 light and is laid before its dam, she, unless the 
 labour has been very severe, recognises it at once, 
 caresses it and lavishes a host of tender appeals to 
 it that none but a mother can appreciate. In the case 
 of twins, you must take care that the second is 
 brought forth as soon as possible, though it rarely 
 delays its appearance ; but it sometimes happens 
 that the ewes is so taken up with the elder of the 
 two that she does not attend to the pains caused 
 
— I05 — 
 
 by the younger. We have sometimes seen the second 
 come to light without the ewe seeming to know 
 anything about it. 
 
 In the case of a false presentation, the shepherd 
 should introduce his hand, previously greased — 
 goose-grease is the best, as it retains its oiliness 
 longer than any other — into the womb of the ewe, 
 and extract the lamb as gently, though as quickly, 
 as possible. The Leicester ewe is said to need 
 assistance at parturition more than other sheep, but 
 in the Downs we never observed many cases of 
 mal-presentation ; perhaps a i&g doubled-back at the 
 knee-joint, or some trifle like that, may occasionally 
 be met with ; this is easily detected, and easily 
 remedied. 
 
 Sometimes, after a hard labour, the ewe seems 
 inclined to refuse to let the lamb suck ; the udder 
 should then be examined, and if it seems inflamed, 
 it should be bathed in a weak solution of nitrate of 
 potash — salpetre — or with hot water alone. If it is 
 found that the udder is neither inflamed nor hard, 
 the ewe should be tied up tightly to a post, and the 
 hind-quarters held firmly tiU the lamb has drunk 
 its fill. It will not be long beft)re the difficulty is 
 overcome and mother and child on good terms. 
 Should a ewe lose her only one, give her one from 
 a ewe that has twins. To get her to take to it, strip 
 the skin from the dead lamb and tie it over the 
 foster-lamb, and the ewe after this is presented to 
 
— io6 — 
 
 her will mother it ; if the skin has been taken off 
 the corpse before it has had time to cool, the dodge 
 will be all the more successful. A single season in 
 the lambing-shed will teach you more of the best 
 means of encountering these unavoidable troubles 
 than all our description. 
 
 If a lamb just born seems reluctant to rise, look at 
 its muzzle, and if there is any watery mucus round 
 the mouth and nostrils, clear it away ; it might 
 stifle the lamb. 
 
 After a hard labour, bathe the uterus of the ewe 
 with a very weak solution of carbolic acid. 
 
 No careful shepherd, accidents apart, ought to be 
 satisfied if he loses more than ^% of his ewes at 
 lambing-time ; but he need not be ashamed of his 
 work if he confines his losses to ^%. There is no 
 one single thing on a farm about which so many 
 lies are told as the losses in the flock. 
 
 The really good trustworthy shepherd can tell 
 at a glance if any one of his ewes is ailing, and will 
 know just what remedies to apply to relieve her : 
 he loses no time about it either. 
 
 If you have more lambs than your ewes can bring 
 up properly, the surplus may be reared « on the 
 bottle, ') with warm cow's milk. But motherless 
 lambs are always a nuisance, baa-ing about all the 
 time, running into the ferm-house after every on§ 
 
— I07 — 
 
 they see, and not unfrequently bouncing over the 
 garden-fence and doing all sorts of mischief. The 
 best thing to do with them is to eat them as soon 
 as they are fit for the knife. 
 
 As for the castration of the males, practice varies. 
 One thing is positive, every male that is not to be 
 kept for breeding, should undergo the operation 
 sooner or later. The Sussex folk cut their lambs 
 at about ten days from birth ; the Hampshire men 
 let theirs go uncut till they are four or five months 
 old, but both sets of breeders cut the tails as soon 
 as the lamb is strong enough to bear the operation. 
 Whenever the lamb is cut, choose a mild day for 
 the job. We regret to say that the early lambs — 
 the later ones, too— that are sent to Montreal Market 
 are never cut. It may seem useless to cut such very 
 young lambs as these, but there is a certain redness 
 that appears on the flesh of uncut lambs that cer- 
 tainly spoils the look of the meat and cannot but 
 have some evil influence on its flavour. A fine lot of 
 our lambs sold for but poor prices in London on 
 account of not having been cut ; this was in our very 
 early days, in 1848. Our English shepherds dock the 
 tails of the lambs much shorter than is the rule 
 here, and, in our opinion, they are right. A tail cut 
 short gives the hind-quarters a squareness to the eye 
 of the buyer, which is decidedly taking ; and as the 
 real reason for docking sheep is to protect them from 
 the hanging on of filth, which leads to the attacks 
 of the fly, that lays eggs which turn into maggots, 
 
-^ io8 — 
 
 the shorter the tail is, in reason, the better. About 
 the third joint is the proper place to cut, but if you 
 cut between two joints, it does not make much 
 difference, as the part left on will slough off, if you 
 tie a string tightly round the tail just above it. 
 
 If you wait, like the Hampshire men, till your 
 lambs are four or five months old before you castrate 
 them, you will have a chance to taste that delicious 
 dish, delicately called « lambs' fry ». Clean and split 
 the orchids, but don't wash them ; dry them care- 
 fully with a napkin, dip them into yolk of egg, and 
 roll them in bread-crumbs, that must be finely sifted 
 and quite dry, putting plenty of dry sweet-herbs, 
 parsley, cherville, thyme, savory and marjoram, and 
 then fry them in plenty of olive-oil till they are a 
 fine brown. The fat or oil for this must be very 
 hot — fat won't boil at ordinary pressure, though 
 the water in the fat does bubble up. 
 
 * 
 
 The ewes and lambs should of course be put on 
 the best pasture your farm affords as soon as it is 
 fit for their reception, i. e., as soon as there is a 
 fair bite for them ; but continue to give them some 
 dry fodder, if you can get them to eat it. As soon 
 as possible, begin the sowing of vetches, rape, and 
 other green-fodder crops, not forgetting that your 
 mainstay for the lambs must be variety. In the 
 Southdown country, where fall-sown crops of course 
 
— I09 — 
 
 succeed, the lambs and their dams taste at least four 
 different kinds of food daily : winter oats, winter 
 barley, rye, and the pasture on the Down. We have 
 not that advantage, but we must do the best we can, 
 and take care that there is no inter-regnum between 
 the different courses served up to our flocks ; for I 
 wish it to impress on your minds that, of all 
 young animals, the most difficult to bring back to 
 a thriving state, after being once allowed to fall off, 
 is the young lamb. 
 
 And what green-fodder crops shall we grow for 
 our flock ? Tares or vetches, mixtures of different 
 grains and pulse, and above all, rape. 
 
 Tares ^ or Vetches. — This is the first crop on our 
 list, and well known to every farmer. It will grow 
 well on all soils, but prefers a clay-loam. On sands, 
 or gravels, it demands a fair dressing of manure, 
 but on heavy land, in tolerable condition, it can do 
 without. As tares are inclined to fall down when 
 they are at their best, it is customary to sow 2 or 3 
 pecks of rye, or oats, per acre with them, but as 
 rye soon becomes uneatable, and horses don't care 
 much for green oats, half a bushel of wheat, at pre- 
 sent prices, would be worth trying. 
 
 The quantity of seed required is 2 ^ bushels to an 
 acre, when the land is in fair order, but 3 bushels 
 would not be too much in rouo:h orround. There are 
 two sorts, the winter and the spring tares ; the seed of 
 
— no 
 
 the former is small, that of the latter much larger, 
 but the quality of the forage of the winter tares is 
 so much superior to that of the spring tares that, 
 in the East of England, they are sown invariably 
 to the utter exclusion of the other sort. A couple 
 of bushels of plaster to the acre, on the young plant, 
 will materially assist the yield. It is well to observe 
 that nothing is gained by very luxuriant crops of 
 tares, as they always fall down and waste them- 
 selves, unless cut at the critical time of coming into 
 bloom. 
 
 A very productive mixture for forage is : i^ 
 bushel of tares, i ^^ bushel of oats, ^ bushel of 
 horse-beans and i^ bushel of wheat. Of course, 
 the roller must follow the harrow at seed time, or 
 else the unhappy man who mows the crop will lose 
 temper, and the farmer's time, pretty frequently. 
 Two sowings should be made, one 3 weeks after 
 the other. 
 
 The time will soon arrive, when we shall no 
 longer see the sheep lying under the fences, and 
 depositing their invaluable manure on the grassy 
 borders of the arable lands out of the plough's reach. 
 To the system of folding off green crops all the 
 summer, as well as root crops all the winter, the 
 formerly poor lands of the East and South of 
 England owe their present fertility. Here, the end 
 of October must, as a general rule, see the flock in 
 the yards ; but it is my firm conviction that Canada 
 
— Ill — 
 
 never will produce the full amount of grain which 
 it is capable of producing, until the sheep is made, 
 what it is in England, the dung-carrier of the farm. 
 On the sandy soils of Bedfordshire, as well as on the 
 chalky clays of Kent, towards the beginning of 
 July, the traveller sees, as he journeys along the 
 roads, large fields of a rich, green plant, something 
 like at all cabbage stalk, with leaves growing all 
 the way up it, and from 3 to 3 % feet high. This 
 is rape^ or Coleseed, the Colza of the French. The 
 latter, distinguished from the former by the rough- 
 ness of the leaves (hispid), is supposed to be, and, 
 perhaps, is the more fattening of the two ; but they 
 will both make sheep ripe fat^ without any other 
 food. Cows are fond of it, and it makes them give 
 plenty of rich milk, but great care must be taken 
 that it is not given to them with the dew on, or in 
 rainy weather. Insects don't trouble it ; at least, 
 used not to ; but of late, I hear that the fly {Jialtica 
 7temormn) does trouble it. As it is sown broadcast it 
 requires no hoeing ; and no weed can struggle 
 against it. It is grateful for manure, but on good 
 soils, of a moderately heavy quality, it can do 
 without it. A few, say, 10 bushels of bones, mixed 
 with as many bushels of ashes, lixiviated if no others 
 can be spared, will, on light soils, produce a crop so 
 luxuriant in its lush abundance, that no one can 
 fail to appreciate it. If it is desired that the ewes 
 should bring forth twin lambs in the spring, a fort- 
 night, or three week of feeding on rape, before the 
 
— 112 — 
 
 ram is put to them, will have the wished for effect. 
 The plant grows so high, and is so thick on the 
 ground, that the sheep don't trample it down, as they 
 do clover ; for which reason they may be allowed 
 to feed on it at liberty ; though of course, the more 
 economical plan would be to divide a small piece off, 
 every two days, or so. 
 
 I submit a sketch of the newest kind of Hurdle ; 
 it is usually made of iron, but I have used some of 
 wood, which answered perfectly. It will be easily 
 
 ^^~/\^^ 
 
 seen that a boy can move them backwards, or for- 
 wards, without difficulty. If sheep are given to 
 jumping, it would be a good plan to leave one of 
 the upright bars of each hurdle i8 inches higher 
 than in the sketch ; if a wire is then run along the 
 tops of the bars, loosely will do, the sheep may try 
 to jump at first ; but, after a few attempts, the 
 shock they receive on falling back from their spring 
 will so astonish their weak nerves, that they wil 
 
— 113 — 
 
 become disinclined to further adventures. It is in 
 this way alone, that the Welsh Mountain sheep 
 the wildest domestic animals in creation, can be 
 kept within bounds. The fresh piece should always 
 be given in the afternoon, say about 2 o'clock, when 
 the sheep will have their bellies pretty full, and 
 the evening dews have not begun to fall. 
 
 One advantage that this hurdle, when used for 
 ewes and lambs, has, is that while the ewes are 
 kept conhned to one place until the fold is advanced, 
 the lambs can go forward into the, as yet, untou- 
 ched vetches or rape. Of course, those who mean 
 to push the lambs, will have a trough or two 
 outside the fold, within which a few pints of pease, 
 or mixed pease and oats, will be placed twice a day. 
 Not only will the lambs be improved by this extra 
 food, but the land will profit by the additional rich- 
 ness of the manure dropped by sheep. In England, 
 many of the best farmers are giving up the use of 
 artificial manure — always excepting superphosphate 
 for the root crop — and devoting the money formerly 
 spent in its purchase to the acquisition of maize, 
 cake, or linseed, for their sheep and cattle. 
 
 The land should be as carefully prepared for rape 
 as for mangels, or swedes. A cross-ploughing, in 
 
 8 
 
— 114 — 
 
 the spring followed by the harrow, the roller and 
 the cultivator, or grubber, if there is one handy, 
 should leave the land in a fine tilth by the middle, 
 or end of May. From 6 ibs. to 8 Sbs. of seed per 
 acre can be either harrowed in, with light harrows, 
 or with a bush ; or, if the soil be a little cloddy, I 
 roller may be used ; but so early in the season a 
 should prefer to leave a harrowed surface to a rol- 
 led surface, as being less likely to suffer consolid- 
 ation and, consequently, hardening on the top, from 
 heavy rains followed by a hot sun ; unless, as in 
 the case of tares &c., where a scythe has to be 
 subsequently used, and even then I would rather 
 roll after the crop is up. 
 
 Not many diseases trouble lambs, as long as they 
 are on the milk. Diarrhoea is sometimes brought 
 on by a change from a poor pasture to a rich one, 
 but this generally yields to a dose of half an oz. of 
 Epsom salts, with a little ginger to soothe the 
 bowels. Of the contrary complaint, constipation, 
 which until after they are weaned rarely affects 
 lambs, a slight aperitive will usually relieve them. 
 Care must be taken, especially in bush farms, to 
 keep the hinder-parts quite free from filth, lest the 
 fly should attack them. The best plan is to shear 
 off the long wool that grows between the thighs, 
 and then to bathe the lambs in the preparation we 
 already spoke of. The head may be protected b}^ a 
 cap, as in the following engraving, but if there is 
 the least wound on the forehead, no cap should be 
 
— 115 — 
 
 used, as the fly might have dropped its eggs before- 
 hand, and the maggots would then be hidden from 
 the shepherd's eye, so that he would not be in a 
 position to deal with them. 
 
 (I) 
 
 (2) 
 
— ii6 — 
 
 The cap (i) is made of lamb -skin, and is tied on 
 the head as shown in (2). Stewart advises that it 
 should be smeared with a resinated carbolic acid 
 salve, which should be renewed every week ; but 
 very few^ shepherds would take so much extra 
 trouble. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ON THE WEANING OF LAMBS 
 
 T ambs are usually weaned at the age of from three 
 to four months. Here, in the province of Quebec, 
 they are generally left to wean themselves. In fact, 
 the ewe often seems, at the above period, to get 
 tired of nursing, and repels the lamb when he seeks 
 food « from nature's founts. » And it is not wonder- 
 ful that she should weary of her work, when we see 
 the terribly hard bunts her tender udder gets from 
 the bossy frontal of her child. 
 
 It would seem at first sight but a simple thing to 
 wean a lamb. One would say : Oh ! take it away 
 from the ewe, and the thing is done. True, but 
 consider a little. Suppose, for instance the ewes 
 and lambs are in a field, and you take the lambs 
 away from their dams and put them into another 
 field. What a jolly row there will be ! The lambs 
 perfectly strange to their new home, wander about, 
 baa-ing after their mothers and lose flesh in their 
 ardent search after their dams and their accustomed 
 playground. It will take them a few days to get 
 accustomed to their new life, Now, look on this 
 
— ii8 — 
 
 picture : take the ewes away from the lambs, after 
 they have passed a few days in one and the same 
 field ; take the ewes away to another field, ont of 
 sight and out of hearing of the lambs, and it will 
 not be long before the young ones will be seen 
 contentedly feeding away in perfect tranquility. 
 Those who have already weaned themselves, as we 
 said just now, wnll be feeding, quite satisfied with 
 the grass, and at that sight the feelings of the others 
 will be soothed, and they will soon follow the 
 examples set them. 
 
 If the lambing is early, the weaning should be 
 early too ; otherwise, the ewes will not have time 
 to get into good condition before the season of 
 coupling recurs. Only conceive that, even in our 
 day in Scotland, the ewes were milked after the 
 lambs were weaned, as I believe they still are in 
 some part of France and in Piedmont ! and all for 
 what ! for the gain in making a few pounds of 
 cheese that some people appear to like ! However, 
 In Britain this is no longer done. 
 
 Though we object to the practice of milking ewes 
 after weaning their lambs, we must w^atch over the 
 ewes in regard to one thing. Bver}^ now and then, 
 a quick-eyed shepherd will find that a ewe, whether 
 from having lambed late, or for whatever cause, 
 may have a flow of milk even after the w^eaning is 
 over. In such a case, she must be dried off, exactly 
 as a cow is dried off before calving. Milk the ew^ 
 
— 119 — 
 
 at intervals of 12 hours, then of 24 hours, then of 
 36 hours, and we need hardly say that, for a week 
 or ten days, the less succulent her food is the better. 
 It is by neglecting these cases, in cows as well as 
 in ewes, that so many of them lose one or more 
 teats. 
 
 After an interval of separation of from ten days 
 to a fortnight, the lambs and ewes can be restored 
 to companionship ; all filial instinct or maternal 
 feeling will have utterly vanished. 
 
 Notes. Why should so many black sheep be kept 
 in the French part of the province ? Is it to save the 
 trouble of dyeing the wool of the flock ? Curiously 
 enough, a very large proportion of the early lambs 
 sent to Montreal are black. On the 27th of February 
 I saw two very fine, though not large, fat lambs 
 hanging up in Messrs Browns' shop, St. Catherine 
 street. They were ripe-fat, the kidneys well covered, 
 and the briskets full of meat, but they handled soft, 
 and a few pints of pease, with a fortnight or so 
 longer feeding, would have made them much better 
 meat. 
 
 The following is the system of feeding the flock 
 of one of the leading breeders of Hampshire-Downs 
 in England : 
 
 Before lambing, the ewes have turnips and sain- 
 fgin hay ; after lambing, they have a mixture of on^ 
 
I20 
 
 part hay to six parts wheat-straw chaffed, with a 
 bushel of pulped roots— swedes or mangels — to vsix- 
 teen bushels of the chaff ; to this is added half a 
 pound of malt culms, and the same of pease-meal, 
 to each ewe, the whole being thoroughly mixed and 
 allowed to ferment for thirty-six hours. Ewes nurs- 
 ing twins have a pound of cotton-cake in addition 
 to the above. Malt culms are the dried rootlets of 
 the malt. Some times called coombs. 
 
 Mixed foods are clearly the best for all kinds of 
 stock. Professor Wrightson, in a letter I saw 
 some years ago, recommends the following as being 
 composed of farinaceous and albuminoid consti- 
 tuents in fair proportion : 
 
 ADVANTAGE OF MIXING FOODS 
 
 " We certainly recommend a mixture of concent- 
 rated foods. Linseed cake alone is too heating, and 
 if the sheep are to be kept in health it ought to be 
 mixed wdth a proportion of foods poorer in albu- 
 minoids. If this precaution is neglected we shall 
 run a chance of sore teats and sore mouths. In the 
 above remarks we were chiefly aiming at arriving 
 at the limits of cost. We now suggest that a mix- 
 ture should be made on the most economical and 
 scientific grounds possible. The mixture should be 
 readily constructed, and be free from complication. 
 It should be composed of farinaceous and albumi- 
 noid constituents in fair proportions. We suggest 
 the^foUowing : — 
 
121 
 
 First mixture for ewes or tegs :- 
 
 linseed cake . . . ^ ^ .1, 
 
 I " cotton cake.... I' ^°^,>^?-P^'^ 
 
 1 bushel of linseed cake 
 cotton cake ... - . _, 
 
 2 '' maize (crushed) J 
 
 Second mixture for ewes : — 
 
 1 bushel of bran "^ 
 
 I " linseed cake ... ! i to i ^ ft), per 
 
 I " barley ( head. 
 
 I " maize J 
 
 Third mixture for lambs : — 
 
 I bushel of white peas "^ ^ , .^ . . 
 
 I " linseed cake... 2f""*yP-. 17^ 
 
 I " malt culms.... \ *° ''%''''"' 
 
 I " crushed barley. J 
 
 Fourth mixture for dry sheep : — 
 
 1 bushel of wheat ^ 
 
 I " barley I i to i J/< ft), per 
 
 I " oats j head. 
 
 I " linseed cake. . . J " 
 
 It is pity, sainfoin is not more cultivated here. 
 I grew some, on Mr. Dawes' farm at Lachine, 
 some ten or twelve years ago ; it did very well, but, 
 unfortunately, the land was wanted the second year 
 for some other purpose, and the sainfoin was 
 ploughed up before it had an opportunit}' of show- 
 ing what it could do at its best. I say, it is a pity 
 it is not grown here, for there is nothing equal to 
 it as a pasture for weaning lambs. It grows well 
 on all calcareous soils, and lasts for several seasons 
 
122 
 
 without renewal. I have never seen lambs scour 
 when on sainfoin, though I have often seen that 
 malady affects them w^hen on red-clover, and these 
 latter patients were completely cured when removed 
 to a sainfoin-lea. 
 
 As I mentioned sainfoin just now, I might as 
 well say a few words on its cultivation, etc. The 
 seed is generally sown in the capsule, if 77iilled seed 
 is sown, 40 ibs. to the acre will be sufficient. We 
 see, upon looking back into one of our journals that 
 the sainfoin we grew at Lachine was fit to cut 17 
 days before red-clover. For hay, it should be cut 
 just as the blossoms are beginning to expand, and 
 as it is a very early crop, it would be well, to 
 increase the first year's yield, to sow with it about 
 5 ibs. of yellow trefoil, medicago lupuli7ta. Both 
 of these plants become sticky if left too long before 
 
 During the first year,sainfoin rarely makes a great 
 show but improves vastly in the second, and in the 
 third will astonish the grower. If milled seed is 
 used, it can be sown with the same implement that 
 is used to sow clover-seed. 
 
 Sainfoin has been the salvation of many a farmer 
 on the poor, thin, chalky lands of the south of Eng- 
 land. There are two sorts, the common and the 
 giant ; the latter is the one usually sown on heavy 
 soils, as although it does not hold out as many years 
 
— 123 — 
 
 as the common sort, its yield in hay and feed is much 
 greater. The treatment of the crop is generally as 
 follows : 3 and sometimes 3^ bushels are sown to 
 the acre with a grain crop and harrowed in, taking 
 care to cover the seed well — in fact, in Kent, we 
 always used to put it in wath a grain drill at 7 
 inches apart — the next summer, it should be mown 
 for hay before the blossom is more than half 
 expanded. The aftermath is good for all sorts of 
 stock, and the best place in the world for weaning 
 lambs, as they never scour on it. We have known 
 it stand for 12 years, but it is generally, in the 
 usual course of cropping, ploughed up for wheat 
 in the 7th year, completing the rotation, and 
 avoiding the too frequent repetition of the red- 
 clover : thus — turnips, barley, clover, wheat, which 
 is the ordinary shift, w^ould become turnips, barley, 
 sainfoin, down for 5 years, wheat — a most refreshing 
 course for the land if it will bear sainfoin. I 
 have an indistinct recollection of Jonas Webb telling 
 me that he had succeeded with the giant sainfoin 
 on a clay-farm some way off from the Babraham 
 establishment. The seed must be new, or failure 
 is certain. We fear however, that any attempt to 
 grow it where zvhite clover fails to take would be 
 hopeless — 710 plant wull grow without plant-food, 
 and we fear that the gentleman who asks a question 
 as to the probable success of sainfoin on his « terre 
 sablonneuse tres mediocre », w^hich is most likely 
 utterly limeless, will not find any plant to answer 
 
— 124 — 
 
 his requirements. The sheep's foot would work 
 wonders, and until that is tried we see no hope for 
 the « very moderate sandy soils. » 
 
 SHOW-SHEEP 
 
 As to the best method of getting up a lot of sheep 
 for show, there is the choice between house and 
 open-air feeding. Sheep are not so happy under 
 cover as in the open air, and we have heard the 
 opinion expressed again and again that an open-air 
 life is the best even for show-sheep. Any judge 
 can at once tell a shed-fed sheep by from his wool. 
 Plenty of room is also a point, and many prizes 
 have been won by sheep which have been allowed 
 to run forward in front of their fellows and pick the 
 primest clover, rape, and cabbage. Upon the artifi- 
 cial foods it is not necessary to dilate, except in so 
 far as to say that sheep of this description should 
 be allow^ed a plentiful supply of the best that money 
 can purchase. A constant variety in natural foods, 
 and a liberal quantity of the best linseed cake and 
 old beans fairly indicate the food ; but who can 
 describe the many minor points as to early and late 
 feeding, frequency of meals, and methods of tempt- 
 ing the unwilling appetite, and coaxing the animals 
 to grow ? These belong to the art of shepherding, 
 and are of vital consequence. A master might as 
 well try to take prizes without sheep as without ^ 
 
— 125 — 
 
 shepherd, and it would not be possible to commit 
 all the store of knowledge possessed by a compet- 
 ent shepherd to paper. Neither possible nor yet 
 desirable ; and if it could be done, the written 
 directions would not ensure the same success in 
 other hands. First-rate shepherds are not so 
 uncommon as they are difficult to find, because they 
 are not given to changing their situations often. A 
 pleasant feature of sheep-farming is that mutual 
 regard of master and shepherd, both men appreciat- 
 ing each other's value. Training is carried on with 
 some little affectation of secrecy, and much under- 
 toned and almost whispered consultation. The 
 attention is constant and the daily care extraor- 
 dinary. 
 
 The trimming of show sheep is a matter of import- 
 ance. There are those who object to trimming, but 
 it is impossible to show sheep in the natural 
 unkempt and rough state. It is really cruel to ask 
 a breeder to exhibit his sheep in a great show, before 
 ladies and gentlemen, without dressing them. What 
 would a horse-breeder say to a regulation insisting 
 that his hunter or his thoroughbred should appear 
 ungroomed and rough, with long tail and uncombed 
 mane ? A sheep-breeder has similar feelings, and 
 similar failings. Besides, the public like to see 
 animals well turned out of hand, and even the pigs 
 appear with their hair curled and oiled, and their 
 skins blooming as if they had been immersed in a 
 bath composed of toilet vinegar. Trimming may 
 
— 126 — 
 
 be overdone, or unfairly done, but to the legitimate 
 use of the art there can be no objection. The meth- 
 ods vary with every breed. The Leicester appears, 
 like the parson, all shaven and shorn. The Lincoln 
 is smeared over with some mysterious unguent, 
 which makes the hands feel very disagreable if they 
 are allowed to touch the fleece. The Cots wold 
 comes out curly in coat, white, and redolent of 
 soap-and-water. The Southdown appears as like a 
 plum as a sheep can possibly be made, and bears 
 evidence of the shears over his entire carcase. A 
 very smug gentleman indeed is the Southdown 
 when in his warpaint. Trimming is carried to the 
 greatest perfection in the Down races. 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 Some curious mistakes found in a « Practical 
 treatise on Agriculture » : 
 
 " Sheep-dung injures the quality of barley, causing 
 it to yield less starch. » What would our English 
 farmers, on the chalk-hills of the Eastern and South- 
 eastern countries say to this ? Almost all the best 
 barle}^ used for malting in the large malt-houses of 
 Saffron-Walden, Ware, &c., for the use of the 
 gigantic breweries of London, Burton-on-Trent, and 
 elsewhere, is grown on the chalk, after turnips fed 
 off by sheep, who pass day and night in folds there ; 
 and the writer continues : « Sheep-dung is suitable 
 to all soils except calcareous ones ! » 
 
— 127 — 
 
 The Sussex breeders keep large flocks of ewes, 
 sell all their wether lambs and full-mouth ewes to 
 the upland graziers of Kent, Surrey, &c., who fatten 
 them ; they send their ewe-tegs out to keep on the 
 grass-lands at so much a score for the winter, which 
 fully accounts for the small size of the Sussex-downs, 
 as they return half-starved. Our old friend, Rigden 
 who kept 300 breeding ewes, never fattened a single 
 sheep, except the superb dozen of so of 20 month's 
 old wethers he used to send to the Smithfield Club 
 show at Christmas, carrying off many a prize. 
 
 The old English weaned their lambs on August 
 1 2th, hence called Lammas-day; but if your ewes 
 have lambed, as they ought to do, by the middle 
 of April, they might be separated from their 
 young by the middle of July, and got into good 
 condition with rape by the ist of September, when, 
 if the ram is introduced to them, they would lamb 
 at the end of January or the beginning of February. 
 What pulled down the price of early lamb this last 
 spring (1892) was the scores of mean little cats, 
 weighing some 4 ifes. the quarter, that were sent up 
 to Montreal in March. Every little acag-mag)) 
 butcher had one hanging up in what he is pleased 
 to call his market^ and a wretched sight it was. A 
 lamb should weigh, if properly done by, from 32 to 
 40 ft)s. of carcase at 12 or 13 weeks old, and should 
 not be slaughtered before that age ; then, if he and 
 his dam have been well fed, pease not having been 
 omitted in the lamb's ration, and the ewe having 
 
— 128 — 
 
 had a fair allowance of cake and oats, the lamb will 
 be a credit to his feeder, as well as to the butcher 
 who kills him and to the cook who dresses him, and 
 the ewe, in a fortnight or three weeks from the time 
 the lamb goes to market, will be ready to follow in 
 its footsteps. 
 
 Some people, who ought to know better, I have 
 seen look for teeth in the upper jaw of a sheep : of 
 course they did not find any ! Nothing so easy as to 
 tell the age of sheep, up to four year's old. In the 
 sheep districts of the South of England they are 
 called, by the number of teeth, « two- tooth, four- 
 tooth, six -tooth, and fullmouth sheep : » ungramma- 
 tical, but sufficiently descriptive. A weaned lamb, 
 with us, becomes a teg^ and a ewe that has lost some 
 of her teeth from age is a cro7ie. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 TREATMENT OF LAMBS AFTER WEANING. 
 
 We left our lambs taking entire care of themselves 
 for the first time in their short lives. There will, of 
 course, be a trifle of fuss and bother for a few days, 
 but they will soon get accustomed to their deserted 
 condition, feed away merrily, play about with each 
 other in bands of three or four, and pass the noon- 
 tide hours in shady spots in refreshing slumber. By 
 the time the July heats have invaded the country, 
 and the grass begin to show signs of failing to 
 supply sufficient food for the increasing needs of the 
 growing lambs, the earliest sown of the rape will be 
 ready to receive them ; so w^e will now consider how 
 we shall make the best arrangement for consuming 
 the rape in the most economical way, not forgetting 
 that we have two things to attend to : first, the 
 proper feeding and care of the lambs ; and, secondly 
 that the land shall get its share of the manure from 
 the lambs equally distributed over the surface and, 
 as soon as possible, be covered in by the plough. 
 
 In order that this system may be thoroughly car- 
 ried out, it is necessary that the flock should be 
 
 9 
 
— I30 — 
 
 divided into two lots : those intended for pushing 
 forwards for the block, i. e. wether-lambs, and the 
 ewe-lambs that are meant to carry on the duty of 
 breeders. 
 
 Some of my readers, many of them indeed, have 
 never seen a flock of sheep folded on a piece of rape 
 or turnips. A fold is an enclosure made by hurdles 
 (see cut), which can be easily transported from place 
 to place, and can be set down continuously in rows 
 impervious, if properly arranged, to sheep. 
 
 A 3 inch bar, 12 feet long, is pierced with holes 
 alternated from side to side, and 6 inches apart, 
 through each of which is driven any rough stuff 
 in the form of stakes, 4 feet 6 inches long, exactly 
 as in the engraving. As I mentioned before, when 
 speaking, of another form of hurdle, if the sheep 
 are given to jumping, a wire should be run through 
 the tops of the stakes, so that, when a sheep tries to 
 get out of the fold, he will find himself arrested by 
 the wire, and after being thrown back by it once or 
 twice, he will be quite cured of his erratic propens. 
 
— 13^ — 
 
 ity. A lad of 15 years can easily roll over these 
 hurdles, and set them in rows, so the work is not 
 costly. Some arrangement, to prevent small, back- 
 ward lambs from creeping out through the spaces — 
 trifling enough — where one hurdle meets another, 
 will have to be made : we used, when at Sorel, to 
 drive short stakes into the ground, but a better 
 plan would be to make, or have made, a dozen or 
 so of iron tripods, as in frosty weather the stakes 
 cannot be driven into the ground. 
 
 The number of these hurdles required on a farm 
 will depend entirely on the number of sheep kept. 
 As to the form in w^hich the fold should be pitched, 
 that again depends upon the shape and width of the 
 field. At all events we must remember that the 
 fold must not be too wide, because it is a maxim in 
 folding that when one length of the field has been 
 gone over by the flock, it should not be wider than 
 a plough can turn over in a day's work. 
 
 But in the case we are considering, w^e must have 
 two folds, and for this reason ; we have two sets of 
 lambs as we said above. The wether-lambs will 
 naturally be given the freshest and best feed, that 
 is, the first piece of rape or turnips enclosed by the 
 fold, in which there will probably be a trough or 
 two, with rations of chaff, or pease, or grain, and, 
 towards the winter, all three ; and when they have 
 taken off the first bloom of the rape or turnips in 
 the fold, another of the same size will be added at 
 
— 132 — 
 
 the end of the former, into which the wether-lambs 
 will be introduced, and when this is occupied, the 
 ewe- lambs will be allowed to follow the wethers in 
 their partially over-eaten fold, to what is technically 
 called « clean-up.)) 
 
 When the wether-lambs have finished their second 
 fold of rape, etc., a third fold must be pitched a-head, 
 into which they will be driven, and the ewe-lambs 
 will again take their place. Next, the first fold- 
 hurdles, being now not wanted in their original 
 place, will be moved a-head of the fold now occupied 
 by the wether-lambs, and so the whole ground-plan 
 is completed. 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 THE FOLDS. 
 
 I need not, I hope, insist upon the necessity of 
 being very careful the first time sheep are put 
 on rape, or clover. There is a great danger, if they 
 are allowed to begin upon their new food on an 
 empty belly, or when the rape, or clover, is wet 
 
 with rain or dew, 
 « blown », and what 
 
 of their 
 the French 
 
 being 
 
 what we call 
 call « meteorises », 
 
 or <i planet-struck »>, from one of those old, now worn- 
 
— 133 — 
 
 out, superstitions, so many of which remain perti- 
 naciously clinging to the less educated of our coun- 
 trymen. The best way to ensure immunity from 
 this danger, is to feed the lambs up well all the 
 morning and so late as 3 P. M., and then to let 
 them into their first fold for a couple of hours. The 
 first thing, upon entering the fold, the lambs will 
 do is to hunt about all over the place, treading 
 down the rape, &c., and there is no chance of their 
 beginning to feed until they have investigated every 
 corner of the fold. Pursue the above plan for a 
 couple of days, and after that they can be trusted 
 to look after their own safety as far as gormandising 
 goes. 
 
 Rape is but a watery food after all, though we 
 have long been convinced by constant watching 
 that the chemist's idea of the water in roots, and all 
 green-crops is by no mean the idea of the practical 
 feeder. But as rape is full of liquid, in some form or 
 other, it is clear that the young sheep must have 
 some kind of dry food to aid its digestion in the 
 assimilation of the moister food ; the question we 
 have now to solve is : what dry food is most suitable 
 to the delicate appetite of the, as yet, unaccustomed 
 lambs ? 
 
 Chaff, whether of straw or hay, is an excellent 
 food — if one could only get the lambs to take it ; 
 the pity is, that until really cold weather comes on, 
 the little wretches persist in neglecting it. Clover- 
 
— 134 — 
 
 hay chaff stands a better chance of being eaten, but 
 even that is not to be depended upon. Of the grains, 
 we prefer oats, and of pulse in the absence of our 
 old friend, the horse-bean, we must resort to pease, 
 and where can we find any superior in this line to 
 the Canadian white-pea. It may not be generally 
 known, but when a sample of « boiling pease » of 
 English growth is offered for sale at Mark-Lane, the 
 great English market for grain, pulse, etc., no corn- 
 factor will offer a price for the bulk until a quart 
 or so of it has been sent to one of the numerous 
 taverns in the neighbourhood of the market and 
 boiled as an experiment on its quality ; while a 
 sample of Canadian pease is bought at once, as if 
 there were no doubt about their « melting in the 
 pot », though we find here, that but too often they 
 are refractory. 
 
 In my own practice, I always gave the dry food 
 to the lambs in the afternoon, because, somehow or 
 other, in this country, sheep do not seem to feed so 
 heartily on rape and early turnips as they do in 
 Britain ; so an early feed or grain, etc., might take 
 away their appetite for the green-meat. I do not 
 think it necessary to crush the grain or pulse? 
 because it is very rare to find any undigested grain 
 in the dung of sheep, in fact they are capital chew- 
 ers. As for the quantity of grain required for each 
 lamb, I always found about a pint of pease and oats 
 mixed, with a double-handful of chaff, sufficient ; 
 but towards the end of the season, as the mornings ' 
 
— 135 — 
 
 get colder and the lambs, or iegs as they would be 
 called at home, are approaching the desired state o^ 
 ripeness, to the pint of mixed grain and pulse I 
 should add about half a pound of decorticated cotton- 
 seed-cake, and make the chaff of clover-hay alone. 
 If the dung of the sheep was found to be too hard, 
 half linseed cake should be substituted for half of 
 the other kind. 
 
 The ewe-lambs, or future mothers of the flock, 
 we left condemned to eat the leavings of their 
 ungallant brothers ; but in order to make up for 
 this unkind treatment it would be only judicious 
 to let them have some trough-food. Oat-straw 
 chaffed, a trifle of cummins, otherwise maltculms, 
 the rootlets of malted barley broken off after the 
 kiln-drying, and sifted, and easily obtained in any 
 of the towns of the province at a very low price, 
 their value as food not being appreciated here. We 
 ^w^ here the analysis of malt-sprouts as they call 
 them in the States, as well as, for comparison, one 
 of oats : 
 
 Oats. Malt-sprouts 
 
 Digestible nutrients. Digestible nutrients. 
 
 Protein Carbohydrates Fat Protein Carbohydrates Fat 
 
 9.0 43-3 47 20.8 43-7 0-9 
 
 The relative value of these constituents per 100 
 ft)s. of stuff is for oats $0.98, and for the malt- 
 sproutSj $1.33, according to Wolf. You will observe 
 
-136- 
 
 that the malt-coombs have but little fat, but, en 
 revanche^ they contain more than twice the quan- 
 tity of protein and albuminoids, the true generators 
 of flesh or lean-meat ; hence they must be good food 
 for all young animals, who require plenty of firm- 
 flesh-making food, and can do without much fat 
 in it, if they find there plenty of starch to be con- 
 verted into fat ; starch you all know, of course, is 
 a carbohydrate. Of the different recipes for feeding 
 given in the books, we advise our readers to beware. 
 Many of them may be locally beneficial and profit- 
 able, but too many are arranged without due con- 
 sideration of cost, and too many are theoretically 
 correct but fail utterly when practically applied. 
 
 If any one finds it more convenient to use corn 
 than oats, he can try it, or when wheat or barley 
 are cheaper per ton than oats, they might take the 
 place of the other grain ; but, as a rule, we have 
 always found that oats and pease, mixed, in the pro- 
 portion of one of pease to three of oats, make about 
 the best food for young things. 
 
 I mentioned, just now, horse-beans ; they do 
 well here, if sown early and on heavy land. To be 
 sown 30 inches apart in the row ; as for the seed 
 per acre, that depends upon the sized bean employ- 
 ed ; of the small « pigeon-bean, » the smallest, 2 ]/> 
 bushels an acre imperial will do, but the large 
 « harrow bean » requires 3 yi bushels — yi less to the 
 arpent. Beans should be got in, if possible, in April ; 
 
— ^2>7 — 
 
 harrow as they are coming through the ground, 
 horse-hoe as often as convenient, and edge-hoe, i. e., 
 along the rows on each side, taking the rows be- 
 tween the feet, once or twice. Many acres used to 
 be grown on the Island of Montreal, whether their 
 cultivation is as prevalent there as it used to be we 
 do not know. 
 
 A good plan, as regards sheep-keep, is to sow, 
 thinly, a little rape-seed between the rows of beans 
 before the last hoeing. This will afford some useful 
 feed after the beans are carried. As we said before, 
 " old-beans » are one of the favorite foods for sheep 
 in England. We have known them yield,, in Essex, 
 England, as much as 80 bushels an acre, and in 
 Gloucestershire, on the alluvial soils of the Severn- 
 side, we have seen the haulm, or straw, nearly 
 seven feet high. Very strong food is bean-stravr for 
 all kind of young-stock ; better even than pea-straw : 
 try it, you who farm heavy land. 
 
 If, at the beginning of September, you fancy your 
 provision of late green-fodder for the sheep seems 
 likely to run short, try a few acres of a mixture of 
 Hungarian-grass and rape ; say 3 lbs of rape-seed 
 and 15 lbs of Hungarian-grass to the acre. The first 
 frosts will turn the grass a little brown, but the rape 
 and the grass together will do 3'our sheep good, if 
 you keep them out of it on frosty mornings. 
 
 When a length of the field has been fed off by 
 the folded sheep, send the plough at it at once, and 
 follow the same plan every time. 
 
-138- 
 
 I was asked, some time ago, how late rape will 
 keep good for sheep. My answer was, that I had 
 kept fattening lambs, or tegs, on it till the 8th 
 December, in 1884, and that they did as well on 
 the last day as they had done in August. The 
 land had been ploughed right up to the fold ; the 
 yield of oats, the next grain-crop, was 70 bushels 
 to the imperial acre, nearly 60 to the arpent. The 
 lambs or tegs turned out so well, that specimen- 
 joints were sent to Montreal, among other persons 
 to the late Mr. Wolferstan Thomas, President of the 
 Merchant's Bank. 
 
 If properly managed, the tegs in the leading fold, 
 that is, the wethers, should be all ready for the 
 butcher by the ist December, when they will 
 probably be about 9 months old. Some of the 
 more forward ones will most likely be ready to be 
 drafted a fortnight before the above date. They 
 will, we may well hope, present a somewhat different 
 appearance to the miserable rats we so often see in 
 the latter autumn months working their weary way 
 along the streets of Montreal on their road to the 
 abattoirs, with their long undocked tails hanging 
 down nearly to the ground, and their thighs all 
 daubed with the filth of the roads. Why should 
 not a fair proportion of them be shipped at once to 
 England ? If the proper treatment had been pursued 
 and the proper breed had been selected, these tegs 
 should certainly weigh from 8 to 9 stones, i. e., 
 from 64 to 72 pounds the four quarters, the very 
 
— 139 — 
 
 size required by the leading London butchers for 
 their West-end trade. At the present time, Downs 
 of that weight, in good order, fat, but not too fat, 
 are worth, as we said above, at least i8 cts. a pound 
 the carcase, that is, each sheep would sell from 
 $11.50 to $13.00 a piece. Surely this must pay ! (i) 
 
 THE EWE-TEGS. 
 
 Let us now suppose that the wether-tegs are all 
 off the farm, and that we have only the ew^e-tegs to 
 care for. You wall have in store, at the beginning 
 of the winter, a few turnips to begin upon, with 
 swedes and mangels, clover-hay, pea-straw, oat-and- 
 barley -straw : at least let us hope so. The turnips 
 will not keep good long, and the swedes must then 
 take their place ; the mangels you will of course 
 not touch — if you can help it — until the spring is 
 near at hand. In the sheds, the older ewes will 
 lodge with the ewe-tegs, as their food wall be the 
 same, until the former are getting forward in lamb) 
 when they must have an improved ration, to fortify 
 them for the coming arduous task of parturition. 
 
 We were much impressed the other day by a pas- 
 sage in «< Wrightson on Sheep management » • 
 
 (i) We are, and not unfrequently, blamed for repeating- ourselves, 
 and we must own that there is a great deal of truth in the accusation. 
 But what is one to do ? As a great writer said, in reply to a similar 
 charge : " If an important principle is laid down only once, it is apt 
 to be unnoticed or forgotten b^- the majority of readers. If it is 
 inculcated in several places, quick-witted persons think that the 
 writer harps too much on one string." 
 
— 140 — 
 
 « Turnips and straw are capable of keeping sheep 
 in good condition, and so far as nutritive properties 
 are concerned, they are sufficient. Too little regard 
 is paid by purely scientific authorities to the great 
 variation of quality in turnips according to the land 
 upon which they are grown. To them a turnip is 
 a root containing 92 % of water, and this is enough 
 to condemn it . . White turnips, although actually 
 inferior to swedes as a food, according to analysis^ 
 are superior to them up to January ist, or even later. 
 They are less trying to the digestion, and their 
 consumption forms an excellent introduction to the 
 harder winter-feeding which begins with the new- 
 year. » 
 
 Curious language, is it not from the Principal of 
 an Agricultural College ? But, then, you see, Mr. 
 Wrightson is a practical farmer as well as a man of 
 considerable attainments in science. He probably 
 knows that while the swede of the « plastic clay » 
 formation and straw will only keep bullock in grow- 
 ing condition, the Aberdeenshire swedes and straw 
 will make those admirable bullocks we used to see 
 at the Christmas market in London. Our farm-tutor, 
 Wm. Rigden, could not fatten sheep or bullocks 
 with the swedes that grew on his farm at Hove, near 
 Brighton, Bug., without cake and grain ; while not 
 15 miles off, on the sandy land near Shoreham, at 
 the foot of the South-downs, sheep were going up 
 to London in scores every week, after receiving no 
 other food than s^yedes and straw. What pecu- 
 
— 141 — 
 
 liarity there was in either soil no one knew, neither 
 could chemical analysis discover. The Hove soil 
 must have been of a great deal more than average 
 fertility, for the wheat-crop yielded, one year with 
 another, 48 bushels of the finest white-wheat to the 
 acre. 
 
 As was mentioned before,ewes in-lamb need plenty 
 of dry food. Pease-straw and clover-hay are the best 
 « roughage », as our friends in the States call it. 
 Water, of course, will be liberally afforded them. 
 In early spring, when the tegs are losing their cen- 
 tral teeth, the roots, whether swedes or mangels, 
 must be cut for them. Prof. Wrightson cautions 
 people about giving mangels to zvether sheep. He 
 might have included rams in his caution, as these 
 roots are equally dangerous to all males of the ovine 
 race. 
 
 Few things are fresher in my memory than the sad 
 losses experienced by Wm. Rigden, whose name I 
 have so often had occasion to mention. In 1852, he^ 
 as usual, was preparing a lot of his Southdowns for 
 the annual show of the Royal Agricultural Society^ 
 then always held in the month of July. Though 
 his farm was running over with green-meat of all 
 kinds : rape, vetches, and trifolium (crimson clover), 
 red-clover, and lucerne, he was paying 25 shillings 
 a ton for mangels ; as he told me, his pupil, he had 
 always found his stock do better on that root than 
 on any other green-food after the month of April. 
 
— 142 — 
 
 But in this case, it turned out just the reverse, as 
 regarded the rams, though the ewes did as well as 
 usual. With a sad face, in walked the shepherd, 
 one morning, while we were at breakfast : « Sir », 
 said he, « I wish you would come and look at the 
 sheds, there are two of the rams mortal bad, and I 
 can't tell what ails them, w Rigden and I went to 
 the sheds at once, and there we found two of the 
 best show-rams lying and kicking, evidently in great 
 agony. A veterinary surgeon was sent for at once, 
 and on his arrival, after he had examined the sheep 
 carefully, all he could say was, that, from their 
 actions the pains must be in the urinary apparatus. 
 He prescribed certain remedies, which had no effect, 
 and when the poor animals were clearly passed hopes 
 of recovery they were slaughtered, and the parts 
 indicated carefully examined. In the upper part of 
 the passage, the urethera, was found, in each case 
 a small crystallized lump, about as big as a hazel 
 nut, that entirely prevented any emission of urine. 
 Three more rams died in the same way, but not 
 one ewe suffered in the least ; and we need hardly 
 say that, after this sad experience, no more male 
 sheep ever tasted mangels on that farm. 
 
 Now, this is my experience in the use of mangels 
 for male sheep ; let us see what Mr. Wrightson says 
 about it : 
 
 « My attention has lately been called to the fact 
 that mangels cannot safely be given in quantity 'to 
 
— 143 — 
 
 wether-sheep. They appear to have an injurious 
 effect on the bladder and other urinary organs, and 
 in many parts of the country flock-masters dare not 
 use them for wethers, although they may be given 
 to female sheep. On this point of practice, I may 
 say that mangel is relied upon as a change of food 
 for ram-lambs in the great sheep-breeding districts 
 of Wiltshire and Hampshire. The roots are either 
 cut into troughs or thrown about among vetches 
 or rape as a change, but the lambs have at that 
 season so large a variety of food in the shape of 
 green-fodder, that no evil consequences follow. Ram- 
 breeders would find it difficult to do without man- 
 gels in the hot months, and shepherds may be seen 
 in our show yards slicing mangels and giving them 
 with cabbage and rape to the rams ». 
 
 Well ; we present both opinions and facts to our 
 readers, leaving them to take their choice. For 
 myself I say, that I would on no account run 
 the risk of losing valuable animals by supplying 
 food to them that has been knozvn to work such 
 damage as that I have recounted. 
 
 Of timothy-hay I have the highest opinion as 
 food for horses, but a low opinion of it as food for 
 sheep ; clover and sainfoin I prefer for the flock, 
 particularly if a fair proportion of straw be cut up 
 into chaff with it. Plenty of straw of all kinds 
 should be always at the command of the sheep ; 
 given without stint in racks, it help to fill their 
 
— 144-- 
 
 bellies and therefore to keep them contented ; we 
 need hardly say that, after pease-straw, oat straw is 
 the best and barley-straw the worst. 
 
 Of cakes, doubtless linseed cake is the best, then 
 comes decorticated cotton-cake, and undecorticated 
 last. But our favourite food has always been, for 
 sheep in sheds, a mixture of pease, oats and linseed, 
 or, perhaps more properly, flaxseed. We recommend 
 the following mixture as having done its duty by 
 us as long as we had stock to feed : 
 
 Take any quantity of the above in the following 
 proportions : 
 
 Oats or corn 3 lbs. 
 
 Pease 2 " 
 
 Linseed 2 '' 
 
 7 " 
 
 Mix the above and grind them finely ; then take 
 a bushel of chaff, from straw of any kind, and mix 
 the whole together, sprinkling the heap with a little 
 water. This can then be distributed among the sheep 
 in troughs and will be found most effective for 
 fattening sheep, or lambing ewes, for fattening 
 beasts or for milch-cows. I introduce oats into the 
 mixture because if the flaxseed is not surrounded 
 by something of the sort, the oil of the seed would 
 ooze out from the stones in the act of grinding ; 
 the oatmeal and husks absorb the oil. In England, 
 
— 145 — . 
 
 this kind of food was largely used as long ago as 
 1848, and here, where linseed can often be bought 
 for from .70 cts to $1.00 a bushel it would pay to 
 use it. I used, formerly, a small roller-mill that 
 just cracked the seed, so nothing was wasted. Both 
 rollers of the same diameter : like a good malt- 
 crusher, in fact. We often see in the papers advice 
 about using linseed and skim-milk for calves. The 
 writers recommend steeping the seed in water for 
 several hours, or boiling it. If any one of my read- 
 ers will take the trouble to take a grain of linseed 
 into his mouth and try to crack it, he will find that 
 before long a thick coat of mucilage will surround 
 it and render it impossible for him to masticate the 
 seed. The experiment of giving unbruised linseed 
 to cattle was tried many years ago in England, and 
 it w^as found that, out of a thousand grains thus 
 administered, eight hundred pass through the ani- 
 mals undigested. 
 
 No animals require such constant supervision as 
 sheep ; they are always getting into trouble : « At 
 one time, the farmer, on his rounds, finds one sheep 
 on its back in a furrow ; a fat sheep on its back, or 
 as the Scotch call it, « lying awald, » is before long 
 a dead sheep ; or perhaps a lamb is entangled in 
 the rough stuff in a corner of the fence ; something 
 is always happening, so that in order to obviate 
 these accidents, the shepherd on the extensive sheep- 
 
 10 
 
— 146 — 
 
 farms of Wiltshire and the Wolds of Lincoln- 
 shire, and on the Borders of Scotland and England, 
 always have near the fold a small hut on wheels, 
 wherein is stowed all sorts of medicines, salves, &c., 
 likely to be needed, and in this hut the shepherd 
 takes his meals, which are sent to him by his wife. 
 The hut is, of course, moved from place to place 
 wherever it may be wanted. 
 
 Sheep should be given fresh food daily, if possi- 
 ble. Here,it would be difficult to manage it,but,at all 
 events, shift the fold as often possible. Three days' 
 consumption at a time is the greatest space permis- 
 sible. Mr. Wrightson objects to the use of the 
 hurdle already depicted and with reason. The 
 trouble must be enormous, if the folds have to be 
 advanced half a dozen times a day, as often, that is, 
 as the sheep need more food. When two folds are 
 occupied, as I recommend there is no fear of much 
 food being wasted. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SHEARING SHEEP 
 
 A very interesting question arises at once on our 
 approaching the subject of shearing the flock : 
 Should the wool be washed on the sheep's back, 
 that is, before shearing, or after it has been shorn ? 
 
 Washing sheep. There has been a good deal of 
 discussion in England lately on the question 
 whether sheep should be washed before shearing or 
 not ; but as the opposition to the invariable practice 
 of British flock-masters came from a suspicious 
 quarter, I do not think that shepherds will blunt 
 their shears over many more fleeces of unwashed 
 wool than heretofore. The interest of certain of 
 the manufacturers and staplers was the only thing 
 regarded ; the health of the sheep and the profit of 
 the farmer were not considered at all. 
 
 However, the real state ' of the case may be 
 gathered from the opinions of certain persons well 
 skilled in the trade, who have no purpose to serve 
 in decrying this invaluable practice of washing 
 sheep before taking the fleece off. 
 
— 148 — 
 
 Of two agents, buyers for large Yorkshire firms, 
 the former speaks as follows : l^he value of wool 
 not washed would be considerably less than the 
 value of washed wool ; also, unwashed wool would 
 lose its colour much sooner than that which has 
 been washed previous to shearing, and, consequently 
 would not answer the purpose for which it was 
 required, and, if kept, would considerably deteriorate 
 in value. 
 
 The other agent writes : We could not buy any 
 unwashed wool unless we could get it for six-pence 
 or seven-pence a pound, (i) Do not be led away 
 by what the papers say about not washing the sheep ; 
 it will be a great loss to growers who do not wash. 
 
 A large wool-merchant writes to an inquirer : I 
 beg to say that the difference between washed and 
 unwashed wool is from 2^% to 35^. For instance : 
 washed wool at, say, from 6d., 8d., 10., 12. a pound, 
 would be for unwashed, 4}4d., 6d., yd., 8^ a pound. 
 
 Mr. Turner, another man well known as an expert 
 in wool, and who in consequence of his reputation 
 aS such was chosen as judge of fleeces at the last 
 meeting of the Suffolk Sheep Society (England), 
 spoke strongly in favour of washing before shearing ; 
 and gave the following reasons for his opinion : 
 
 (i) Best down teg wool was then worth from isd. to 13d. a pound 
 in England, 
 
— 149 — 
 
 (« Mr. Turner said he had taken great pains to go 
 into this important question, and he had been asked 
 over a hundred times by letter what was his opinion 
 on the subject. He had no hesitation in saying that 
 he was very strongly of opinion that English wool 
 ought to be washed on the sheep's back. Objection, 
 of course, was taken to this in many cases, but if 
 they knew as much as he about the source from 
 which these objections came they would not think 
 much about them. In 1887, 23,000.000 ft)s weight — 
 about one-sixth of the whole produce — was exported 
 from England, and if the wool was not washed this 
 export trade would be ruined. For instance ; there 
 was an import duty on wool to the United-States of 
 5d. a pound ; whether the wool was washed or not 
 the duty was the same. It was quite clear that 
 under the circumstances the iVmericans would buy 
 washed wool which would only shrink 20 per cent., 
 when they certainly would not buy unwashed wool 
 which would shrink 40 per cent. The Bradford 
 Chamber of Agriculture had made an inquiry into 
 the subject, and he believes their decision would be 
 against the non-washing of sheep. » 
 
 If dirty unwashed wool is offered for sale, imme- 
 diately the buyer begins to find fault, and to make 
 out that there never was such a filthy lot brought 
 to his factory ; whereas, when a nice well-washed 
 fleece is shown, the bright, clear look of the wool 
 fascinates the eye of the manufacturer, and he jumps 
 at the lot in a moment. 
 
— I50 — 
 
 No ! I do not think we will give up w^ashing our 
 sheep yet. 
 
 The Bradford Chamber of Commerce, the largest 
 company of wool-buyers in the w^orld, have record- 
 ed their opinion on the very point at issue. « What is 
 wanted » they said,'* is more care and attention to this 
 « part of his business on the part of the British agri- 
 « culturist ; and as the out spoken opinion of this 
 « Chamber may be of service, the committee appoint- 
 « ed to report on the subject venture to say that in 
 « this matter an amount of culpable slovenliness 
 « prevails on the part of the farmer w^hich in any 
 « other branch of our national industry would not 
 « be tolerated.* If the Bradford chamber of Com- 
 merce have seen reason to alter their opinion since 
 they reported to Earl Cathcart in the above terms, 
 some few^ years ago, I shall be glad to have inti- 
 mation of it. 
 
 SHEEP SHEARING 
 
 It may be taken as an axiom in economics, that 
 the more completely finished for the use of the 
 consumer any article is, when it leaves the manu- 
 facturer, the higher proportionate price will it fetch. 
 For instance ; cotton yarn is much dearer in pro- 
 portion than the rough cotton as the bale leaves the 
 press in its native country ; and it is clear, from 
 this consideration, that the labour expended on the 
 cleansing, teasing, and other manipulations it under- 
 
— 151 — 
 
 goes, with a proper addition to the price of the 
 article, goes on accumulating, until at last the pur- 
 chaser of a printed calico dress pays for the whole. 
 
 Thus, we have often wondered why the farmers 
 of this province are so fond of shearing their sheep 
 in the unwashed state. To begin with, it will be 
 said that the wool is washed afterwards : true 
 enough, but shearing a sheep with a dirty skin 
 makes rough work, and moreover, wool washed off 
 the sheep's back is deprived of its yolk^ when 
 dry feels harsh, and is in an unfit state for certain 
 processes of manufacture. 
 
 In the year 1862 we superintended the washing 
 of 60 sheep for the late jNI. Amable Demers, of 
 Chambly. The affair was very simply managed : 
 the sheep were penned in a temporary fold, by the 
 side of the « petite riviere de Chambly ; » a large 
 tub was kept full of water, into which each sheep 
 was plunged and thoroughly washed, the dissolved 
 yolk acting as a soap ; and after ten days, passed in 
 a clean pasture, the sheep were shorn, so much to 
 the satisfaction of the proprietor and the manufact- 
 urer (Mr. Thomas Willett), that the former pre- 
 sented me with a two year old fat wether in acknowl- 
 edgement of my assistance. I say, that the sheep 
 were kept in a clean pasture, because it is well that 
 there should be no roads or earth-banks for them to 
 soil themselves against. The practice of tub-wash- 
 ings, ^3 distinguished from pool-washing, has long 
 
— 152 — 
 
 been in use in Yorkshire, England, and was the 
 invention of Raspail, a French chemist, who observ- 
 ed that « when the wool is washed, this soap (yolk) 
 is dissolved, and takes the salts with it. Hence it 
 follows, that the water that has been used in this 
 process becomes, at each repetition, better adapted 
 for the purpose. » Stephens, in his « Book of the 
 Farm, » objects to the practice, but he seems never 
 to have tried it, and as a set off to his opposition, 
 I think the fact that, in England, tub-washed wool 
 always brings from a half-penny to a penny a pound 
 more than pool-washed wool will be sufficient. At 
 least it used to when I knew the trade. 
 
 Sheep should not be washed until the water has 
 attained a temperature from 56^ F. to 60^ F. After 
 washing, they should wait ten days or so, before 
 shearing, as the wool must not only be thoroughly 
 dry, but the yolk, the natural oil of the wool, must 
 return into it again, and the new wool should have 
 risen from the skin, before the old is taken off. Dis- 
 regard to this particular renders shearing difficult, 
 and certainly injures the appearance of the fleece. 
 Generally speaking, one may wash the first week 
 in June and shear in the second : if the water of 
 small streams be used, it will be found warm enough 
 by that time. 
 
 « The yolk being a true soap, soluble in water », 
 says lyuccock, « it is easy to account for the compar- 
 ative ease with which the sheep that have the 
 
— 153 — 
 
 natural proportion of it are washed in a running 
 stream. » The composition of yolk was found to be^ 
 in the rough : soap of potash, carbonate of potash, 
 acetate of potash, muriate of potash, lime, and an 
 animal fatty matter which imparts to wool its 
 peculiar odour. The medium quantity of yolk in 
 short-wooUed sheep, according to Youatt, is about 
 ^ the fleece. More yolk is found on the breast and 
 neck of the sheep than on any other part of the body, 
 and it is there that the finest and softest wool grows. 
 Softness of the pile is, therefore, evidently connected 
 with the presence and quality of yolk. There is no 
 doubt that this substance is designed to nourish the 
 wool and to give it richness and pliability. In what 
 way is the growth of the w^ool promoted ? By 
 paying more attention than our farmers are accus- 
 tomed to give to the quantity and quality of this 
 substance possessed by the animals which they select 
 for breeding purposes. The quantity and. quality of 
 the yolk, on w^hich farmers seldom bestow a thought, 
 asd the nature of wdiich they neither understand 
 nor care about, will, at some future period, be 
 regarded as the very essential and cardinal points of 
 the sheep — considered as a wool-bearing animal. I 
 must add to Mr. Youatt's expression of opinion : for 
 wool is so low in price and mutton so dear, that the 
 question now^-a-days is : which sheep wnll produce 
 the greatest weight and finest quality of meat ? 
 
 Shearing. — A smooth barn-floor is the best place 
 for this operation. Our flocks are so small that no 
 
— 154 — 
 
 extensive preparation is needed. The best shears 
 have additional springs between the handles to 
 separate the blades more forcibly, but they hurt the 
 hand, and are not worth the trouble. The great 
 thing in shearing is to keep the points clear of the 
 skin by gently pressing the blades upon the skin — 
 
 ba 
 
 s 
 
 keep the hand low, and rest the broad part of the 
 blades upon the skin — you will not cut 3-our sheep 
 much if this is attended to. With scissors, such as 
 we have seen used in the French country, but ragged 
 work can be made. 
 
— 155 — 
 
 Our engravings illustrate the three stages of shear- 
 ing ; First, after setting the sheep on its rump, and 
 on the supposition that the clipper is a right-handed 
 man, he rests on his rig^ht knee, and leans the back 
 
 of the sheep against his left leg a^ bent 
 the shears in his right hand, and 
 
 holding 
 
 Taking 
 up the 
 
 Fig. 2. 
 
 sheep's mouth with his left, he first clips the short 
 wool on the front of the neck, and then passes down 
 the throat and breast between the fore-legs to the 
 belly. Then, placing the fore-legs b under his left 
 arm c, he shears the belly across from side to side 
 
— 156- 
 
 down to the groins. In passing down the belly and 
 groin, where the skin is naturally loose, while the 
 shears d are at work, the palm of the left hand e 
 pulls the skin tight. The scrotumyis then bared, 
 then the inside of the thighs g g^ and lastly, the 
 sides of the tail h. These are all the parts that are 
 
 Fig. 3 
 
 reached in this position. For the clipping of these 
 parts small shears suffice ; and as the wool there, is 
 short, and of a detached character, it is best clipped 
 by the points of the shears, as carefully held close, 
 like d. 
 
 Fig. 2 represents the second stage of clipping. Its 
 position for the sheep is gained by first relieving its 
 
— ^57 — 
 
 fore-legs d from their position in fig. i, and, gently 
 turning the sheep upon its far side, while the 
 shearer, resting on both knees, supports its far 
 shoulder upon his lap. You may always rely upon 
 this fact — the more a sheep feels at ease, the more 
 readily it will lie quiet to be clipped. Supporting 
 its head with his left hand, the clipper first removes 
 the wool from behind the head, then around the 
 entire back of the neck to the shoulder-top. He 
 then slips its head and neck a under his left arm 
 ^, and thus having the left hand at liberty, he 
 keeps the skin tight with it, while he clips the wool 
 with the right, from where the clipping in the first 
 position, fig. I, was left off to the backbone, all the 
 way down the near side. In the figure, the fleece 
 appears to be removed about half way down the 
 carcass ; the left hand d lying flat, keeping the skin 
 tight ; while the right hand e holds the shears at 
 the right part, and in the proper position. The 
 clipper thus proceeds to the thigh and the rump 
 and the tail ^, which he entirely bares at this time. 
 
 Clearing the sheet of the loose parts of the fleece, 
 the clipper, holding by the head, lays over the sheep 
 on its clipped or near side, while still continuing 
 on his knees ; and he then rests his right knee, fig. 
 3, over its neck on the ground, and his right foot d 
 on its toes, the ankle keeping the sheep's head down 
 to the ground. This is the Mrd position in clip- 
 ping. The wool having been bared to the shoulder 
 
- 158 - 
 
 in the second position, the clipper has now nothing 
 to do but to commence where it was then left off, 
 and to clear the fleece from the far side from the 
 back-bone, where it was left off in fig. 2, in the 
 second position, towards the belly, where the clip- 
 ping was left off in the first position, fig. i. — the left 
 hand e being still at liberty to keep the skin tight, 
 while the right handy uses the shears across the 
 whole side to the tail. The fleece g is now quite 
 freed from the sheep. In assisting the sheep to rise, 
 care must be taken that its feet are free from 
 entanglement with the fleece, otherwise, in its 
 eagerness to escape from the unusual treatment it 
 has just received, it will tear the fleece to pieces. * 
 On comparing the attitudes of the clipper and of 
 the sheep in the different stages of clipping just 
 described, with those of a mode very common in 
 the country, it is necessary to look again at \}ci& first 
 stage of the process, fig. i, the common practice of 
 conducting which is to place the sheep upright on 
 its tail, and the clipper to stand on his feet, sup- 
 porting its back against his legs — which is both an 
 insecure and painful position for the sheep, and an 
 irksome one for the man, who has to bow much 
 down to clip the lower part of the animal. 
 
 *The artist has erroneously represented the sheep lying on its /ar 
 side, and the clipping to proceed from the belly to the back-bone, 
 which is the proper posture for the second position, as also the keep- 
 ing the head of the sheep down with the left leg a, whereas the 
 sheep should have lain upon its near side, the wool been shorn from 
 the back-bone to the belly, and the head d kept down with the 
 right leg, as described above. 
 
— 159 — 
 
 In the second stage, fig. 2, the man still remains 
 on his feet, and the sheep upon its rump, while he 
 secures its head between his legs, in order to tighten 
 the skin of the near side, which is bent outward by 
 his knees. The skin is certainly tightened, but at 
 the expense of the personal ease of the animal ; for 
 the hand can tighten the skin as well, as shown in 
 all the figures, at B and E ; whilst the bowing down 
 so low, and so long, until he clips the entire side, 
 can not fail to pain the back of the clipper. The 
 third position is nearly the same in both plans, with 
 the difference in the common one, which keeps the 
 left leg bent, resting on its foot — a much more 
 irksome position than kneeling on both knees. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE AGE OF SHEEP 
 
 As we said before, the age of a sheep up its fourth 
 
 year, can be accurately told by inspecting its 
 
 teeth. The following cuts and description we borrow 
 
 from the book of the celebrated French Veterinary 
 
 M. Samson. 
 
 A TWO-TOOTH SHEKP, 12 TO 1 5 MONTHS 
 
 When a month old, the lamb has 8 temporary 
 teeth and three molars on each side of the jaw. 
 
 At three months, a permanent molar is added to 
 the three. 
 
 At nine months, the second permanent molar 
 makes its appearance. 
 
— i6i — 
 
 At fourteen months, two permanent incisors 
 appear. 
 
 At eighteen months, a third permanent molar 
 shows itself. 
 
 A FOUR-TOOTH, 20 TO 24 MONTHS 
 
 At twenty-one months, there will be seen four 
 permanent incisors. 
 
 A SIX TOOTH, 30 TO 36 MONTHS 
 
 At thirt}' months, there will be seen six perma- 
 nent incisors. 
 
 II 
 
— l62 — 
 
 And when the sheep reaches the age of from forty 
 to forty-five months, he will show his full-mouthy 
 that is eight permanent incisors. 
 
 A FULI.-MOUTH, 40 TO 45 MONTHS 
 
 We must observe however, that many variations 
 in the dentition of sheep occur, owing to the food, 
 or to some other cause ; but as a general rule, we 
 may depend upon a sheep with two permanent inci- 
 sors being one year old ; if he has four he is two 
 years old ; if six, three years old ; if eight, he is a 
 full-mouthed sheep, i. e., four years old. 
 
 Note. — Cutting-up a sheep. Before being slaugh- 
 tered, a sheep should be fasted for at least 24 hours. 
 A sheep is supposed to lose about 13 per cent of its 
 weight during the above named time. Simple 
 enough, the operation of slaughtering : the animal 
 is laid on its side on a bench or stool ; its legs, all 
 but the hind leg that is uppermost as it lies, are 
 tied together ; and its life is taken by a thrust of a 
 straight knife through the neck, severing the carotid 
 artery and the jugular vein of both sides ; the blood 
 
— ^63 — 
 
 flowing freely out, the sheep soon dies. Many butch- 
 ers, for what reason I know not, twist the poor 
 thing's neck round, and break it against their knee. 
 As soon as the sheep is dead, a small hole is cut 
 through the skin into the flesh just where the leg 
 begins to thicken ; the butcher, applying his mouth 
 to the hole, fills the carcase with wind on that side, 
 and does the same on the other side, all the time 
 thumping the carcase with his fist, to promote the 
 equal circulation of the wind. This is said to 
 obviate all risks of bruises. 
 
 Henry Stephens, in his great work, « The Farm «, 
 says that « sheep require no fastenings with cords », 
 wherein, in our opinion, he his wrong. About 80 
 years ago, our farm-steward — bailiff we call that 
 officer in Kent — was killing a sheep ; the animal 
 was not tied ; the man, wanting to change the sheep's 
 position, put the knife between his legs ; the sheep 
 in its struggles kicked the knife, it struck into the 
 man's thigh, cut the femoral artery, and in less than 
 ten minutes the man had bled to death. Since that 
 time, no one in that part of the world has ever killed 
 a sheep without tying its legs. One leg, the upper 
 one as it lies, is left loose in order that the animal 
 by his kicking with it, may hasten the expulsion 
 of the blood. 
 
 The entrails are then removed by an incision 
 along the belly, after the carcase has been hung up 
 by a bar placed through the tendons of the leg or 
 
— 164 — 
 
 hocks. The parts inside the brisket and neck are 
 now carefully washed out with a cloth dipped in 
 water, the caul separated from the paunch, and the 
 job is complete ; though I forgot to say that the 
 belly is distended with a large skewer or stretcher. 
 
 The carcase should hang for 24 hours in a clean, 
 cool, dry room before it is cut up. If the room is 
 not cool, meat will never become firm ; if it is not 
 dry, the carcase will remain clammy to the touch. 
 In England, our sheep used to be divided down the 
 back with a chopper ; here, we believe, it is done 
 with a saw. 
 
 Now, how shall we cut up the sheep into joints ? 
 That depends upon whether the sheep is a small 
 Welsh sheep or a fair sized Down or Leicester. In 
 the former case, the Scotch plan of making what, 
 after the French system of butchering, is called a 
 « jigot »> (cf. gigot), i. e., cutting part of the loin in 
 with the leg. On the English plan, the leg is cut 
 off short and the loin is taken clean away from the 
 neck. The shoulder is removed entire and either 
 roasted — never boiled — or dressed with a fine savory 
 sauce, after being egg-and bread-crumbed and care- 
 fully broiled on a rather slow fire, or in a Dutch-oven 
 before the fire. 
 
 The best joint in a sheep's carcase is the saddle. 
 It consists of the two loins undivided. If you are 
 fortunate enough to have the means of roasting meat 
 
- i65 - 
 
 by an open fire, do not allow the spit to be thrust 
 through any joint, but get what is called a « cradle- 
 Spit M, in which the meat lies like a patient baby in 
 its real cradle. You probably like mutton-chops ; 
 try one cut from the upper end of the saddle right 
 across the back. This, commonly called a " double- 
 chop », though it is by no means common, is as much 
 better than a chop from the loin as a saddle is better 
 than the loin itself ; probably, from the gravy being 
 kept in, instead of oozing-out during the progress of 
 the broiling. Chops should be cut about i )< inch 
 thick, and broiled quickly on a sharp, brisk fire. 
 Seven minutes should cook a chop of the above 
 thickness. 
 
 The shoulder, plainly roasted, is eaten with onion- 
 sauce. The neck has two parts, the « best-end », 
 which can be either roasted or boiled ; if the latter, 
 caper-sauce should accompany it ; the « scrag » makes 
 good mutton-broth. The breast, or brisket, is gener- 
 ally too fat. but is not bad when dressed something 
 in the same way as I have described for dressing 
 the shoulder. 
 
 Not many days ago, m}^ butcher, who is good 
 enough to think I know something about mutton, 
 sent us the rib of Cotswold sheep. It was prepost- 
 erously fat, but the tenderness and rich flavour of 
 the lean was something to dream of. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE DISEASES OF SHEEP 
 
 TTaving cursorily gone over the general points of 
 interest in the treatment of the flock, I now 
 turn, in the last place, to the diseases that afflict it ; 
 and, first, I will offer a few words on that trouble- 
 some complaint 
 
 This is a complaint with which we have not 
 much acquaintance in this country ; still, it may 
 be as well to learn something about it. It is gen- 
 erally prevalent in wet seasons, and sometimes 
 affects hares and rabbits as well as sheep. In 1838, 
 when I was staying at Wenvoe Castle, Glamorg- 
 anshire, it was fearfully destructive to these ; I 
 remember well picking up five or six hares, in one 
 short stroll through the meadows, all of them carried 
 off by rot. Not many years ago, the writer's brother, 
 of Hill-Court, Gloucestershire, wrote to me, saying 
 that, on his property, there had been neither hare, 
 rabbit, not sheep spared for nearly four years ! 
 The losses of sheep in England amounted, during 
 the period, to millions, and no remedy has ever been 
 found for the disease. Mr. Bakewell, the Leicester 
 man, used to utilise this complaint in a curious way. 
 
— 167 — 
 
 Having observed that some meadows enjoyed (?) the 
 curious property of always rotting the sheep that 
 were pastured therein, he made a point, whenever 
 he wished to fatten ojEE a lot quickly, of sending them 
 to feed there ; would any non-observant man have 
 ever discovered that rotten sheep fatted more rapidly 
 than sheep free from the disease ? Of course these 
 were not breeding sheep, but sheep intended for 
 immediate slaughter. 
 
 THE ROT 
 
 I am not veterinary surgeon, so I do not 
 pretend to write an original treatise on this trouble. 
 The disease is caused by the incursion into the liver 
 of what is usually known as th^ Jiomtder or fluke ^ 
 the history of whose life is rather peculiar. It starts 
 as a parasite of a fresh-w^ater snail, whose shell is 
 from one-fourth to one-half of an inch long ; a well- 
 known veterinary surgeon tells us that this snail 
 suffers as much from the invasion of the fluke as 
 the sheep does, and often dies from its attacks. « A 
 severe winter kills off « rotten snails, » but a mild 
 winter may simply render them torpid, and thus 
 unusually early cases of rot in sheep frequently 
 occur. In the tissues of this snail it develops into 
 a kind of sac, in w^hich develop numerous larvse 
 with tails. These escape through a special vent in 
 the sac, and for the time lead a free and independ- 
 ent life in water. They then come to rest, cast their 
 tails, and develop an enveloping cyst (bladder) of a 
 
— i68 — 
 
 snow-v/hite colour which adheres to the leaves or 
 stalks of grasses or water-plants. These may remain 
 a few weeks, but if they undergo no further change 
 of condition, the embryo within perishes. In this 
 form, on grass or in water, they pass into the 
 alimentary canal of the host or ultimate bearer (the 
 sheep or horse), the pupa-cyst (the envelope) is 
 digested by the action of the gastric juice, and, 
 from the stomach of the host, through the duodenum 
 and the bile-duct, the fluke gradually winds its way 
 up to the liver. » 
 
 It is hardly worth while to enter into a discussion 
 on the different opinions of learned men as to the 
 way in which the fluke is disseminated. Suffice it 
 to say, that as one sheep may contain a thousand 
 flukes, and each fluke forty thousand eggs, it is clear 
 that one sheep may contaminate a large pasture. 
 
 When the eggs that the fluke has laid are ex- 
 pelled from the sheep, the rain washes them into 
 drains, ponds, &c., the eggs develop into ciliated 
 (hairy) embryos that swim about freely in the water, 
 and after a few days of free, active existence, the 
 young creature, losing its cilia becomes a creeping 
 larva, and finds its way into the mollusc (snail, 
 here), its first host as the sheep is its last. 
 
 Four stages of " rot » are : 
 
 I, Acute inflammation of the liver. 
 
— 169 — 
 
 2. Dropsy ; the liver is pale and firm. 
 
 3. Liver gets, so to speak, worn away. 
 
 4. Flukes, generall}^ in May and June, leave the 
 liver. 
 
 As we mentioned in a former part of this essay, 
 sheep, in the earlier stage of the invasion of the 
 fluke, profit in some mysterious way and absolutely 
 get fat very quickly ; in consequence of which pe- 
 culiarity, butchers sometimes put their sheep on 
 unsound land shortly before slaughtering. 
 
 We never heard of any sure cure for the rot ; 
 keeping sheep out of low-lying, unchained land is 
 the best preventive. After severe, frosty winters, 
 after a series of dry summers and falls, the disease 
 is less prevalent than when those seasons have been 
 wet. Says Prof. Wrightson : «To cure a rotten 
 sheep is looked upon by many as hopeless. If, 
 however, the animal outlives the expulsion of the 
 flukes, it may recover. Professor Simond's recipe 
 will prove a good guide, and is as follows : « Take 
 of bruised linseed-cake and pease meal of each a 
 bushel ; 4 ft)s. each of salt and aniseed ; i ft. of 
 sulphate of iron ; grind all these together finely, 
 and give to each sheep from half to one pint daily. 
 Salt is an excellent tonic, and no sheep grazed on 
 salt-marshes are ever affected by the rot. Change 
 of diet is also insisted upon, and stimulants, such as 
 
— 170 — 
 
 turpentine and sulphuric ether, are recommended. 
 Fortify the system in every way possible, by good 
 hygiene, tonics and stimulants. » Above all things, 
 keep your sheep out of dangerous pastures ; such 
 as are known in your neighbourhood as « always 
 giving sheep the rot. » 
 
 THRUSH OR CANKER 
 
 Every one who has kept breeding ewes knows this 
 complaint. It aiBFects both lamb and dam, though 
 in different ways. The lambs suffer from sore 
 mouth, the ewes from pimples and a sort of scab 
 on the teat. The first sign of its appearance is that 
 the ewes will not stand still to be sucked ; then, 
 naturally, the lambs wander about hungry and 
 dissatisfied, continually trying to get food and con- 
 tinually getting discontented. Cure there is none ; 
 it has to be borne with, and only a change to warm 
 weather and plenty of green-meat have any allevi- 
 ating power over it. 
 
 When ewes are troubled with sore udders, the 
 symptom of this complaint, they should be freely 
 lanced, the lambs being of course taken from them 
 and « brought up by hand. » A mild dose of Epsom 
 salts, with a trifle of coriander seed or aniseed 
 should be the first remedy, followed by a little pow 
 dered columba root and salt in their trough-food 
 twice daily. As a dressing for the udder, a 5/^ so 
 lution of carbolic acid, applied twice a day, will aid 
 
— 171 — 
 
 in healing wounds and dispersing the eruption — a 
 weak solution of alum will do as well. The mouths 
 of the lambs should be washed out with a solution 
 of chlorate of potash, lo grs. to theoz., just enough 
 to moisten the surface without allowing any to be 
 swallowed. Where proud flesh appears on the gums 
 or lips, it should be carefully touched with lunar 
 caustic, and any loose tooth should be removed. 
 Youatt recommends that the mouth should be wash- 
 ed two or three times a week with a solution of 
 alum, or diluted tincture of myrrh, and that a cou- 
 ple of oz. of Bpsom-salts should be administered. 
 
 No doubt, the disease is caused by damp lodgings, 
 cold, raw weather, &c. Some assign it to feeding 
 among harsh stubble, or stony ground ; but though 
 indi\idual cases may spring from these causes, we 
 cannot think they will account for the wholesale 
 losses experienced by some of our leading English 
 flockmasters. 
 
 FOOT-ROT 
 
 Of this malady, the treatment, as far as I know, 
 is, or at any rate was, the universal treatment 
 pursued by all South of England shepherds. Of 
 « butyr » of antimony, which Youatt recommends, 
 as I did in my previous recipe, he says : " There 
 is no application comparable to this. It is effectual 
 as a superficial caustic ; and it so readily combines 
 with the fluids belonging to the part to which it is 
 
— 172 — 
 
 applied, that it quickly becomes diluted and com- 
 paratively powerless, and is incapable of producing 
 any deep or corroding mischief. » If, in operating, 
 the hoof has been too severely deprived of its horny 
 covering, bandage it. Trim the feet of whole flock 
 to prevent the wall of the hoof from growing too 
 long so as to double under the foot. When paring 
 the foot for the disease, previous to the dressing 
 with butter of antimony, take care to get to the 
 very bottom of the loose horn. I used to harden 
 my heart when about this job, and it was needed, 
 for the struggles of so gentle animal as the sheep 
 in pain are by no means agreable to one who is not 
 used to performing vivisection. 
 
 Fortunately for our farmers in this province, 
 sheep are rarely affected by that horrible complaint, 
 the foot-rot. Still, some years ago, it would seem, 
 from the reports of the Chicago Market, some 
 recently imported Shropshires were attacked with 
 it shortly after their arrival. The buyer made a 
 terrible fuss about it, and no wonder. The seller, 
 whom I know to have been utterly ignorant of the 
 mishap, was called all sorts of name, as if he could 
 have detected the latent malady. I never could 
 understand why long-wools should be so much more 
 subject to this complaint in the feet than Dowms 
 and other short-wools ; but such is doubtless the 
 case ; a very nast}' complaint it is, and nothing but 
 patience and persistent attention will cure it ; cont' 
 
agious too, without a doubt, and, I believe, worse 
 in wet than in dry seasons. 
 
 The foot-rot attacks the hoof, in the division, and 
 gradually works its way upwards under the horn. 
 If sheep are kept on damp straw in the latter 
 autumn and in spring, that will be a favourable 
 opportunity for the foot-rot to « get in its work. » As 
 I mentioned before, there is not much danger 
 in allowing^ the bedding; to accumulate in hard 
 weather ; but in mild seasons, I should prefer, if 
 |-here is any chance of foot-rot affecting the flock, 
 making a floor of boards, laid, say, three-quarters of 
 an inch apart and about 3 feet from the ground. 
 These boards should be swept twice a day, and 
 occasionnally sprinkled w4th some dissinfectant. 
 The droppings could be drawn out from under the 
 boards, and, mixed with bone-dust or superphos- 
 phate, would be a famous manure for rape or turn- 
 ips. Do you fancy the sheep would not like to 
 repose on boards ? just watch them in summer, and 
 you will see that they alwa} s select the hardest 
 parts of the field to lie on in their noon siesta. To 
 preserve the urine, a few bushels of spent tan-bark 
 might be used in the pit under the boards as an 
 absorbent, and if the dissinfectant is frequentl}^ used, 
 there will be no perceptible smell, and the nitrogen 
 will of course be preserved intact. 
 
 But the question we were considering is, how to 
 cure the foot-rot. Well, I have cured it with my 
 
— 174 — 
 
 own hands and although it takes time and, by no 
 means pleasant, trouble, I do not think any one 
 need despair of success, if he will follow these ins- 
 tructions to the letter. We are almost certain to 
 have the foot-rot here, sooner or later, so that 
 it is right that we should be prepared to face it 
 when it comes. 
 
 With a sharp knife and a steady hand, pare away 
 all the horny part of the hoof that has been under- 
 mined, taking care not to cut into the flesh so as to 
 make the blood flow. Then, apply with a feather, 
 all over the part left bare, some butter of antimony . 
 Mr. Stephens calls this cruel treatment, but the 
 disease is far more painful than the remedy, and that 
 pain is continuous. The flesh will smoke under this 
 treatment, but if you will apply it earnestly the 
 animal will be cured, and, at any rate, it is prefer- 
 able to letting the poor thing die in pain, as it 
 certainly would were it to be allowed to go on long 
 untreated. This, as far as my experience goes, is 
 the only cure for the foot-rot. There are several 
 remedies prescribed in the books, such as driving the 
 flock through newly slaked lime, &c., but I never 
 knew them do much good. 
 
 FLIES 
 
 There are three sorts of flies that are injurious to 
 sheep : the common fly, the tick-fly, and the bot- 
 fly. 
 
— 175 — 
 
 Of the common fly there are several kinds,of which 
 the house-fly or musca domestica is one. Whether 
 this unwelcome and persistent worrier of the human 
 race ever gets into the country and persecute the 
 sheep, is a matter of doubt ; but there is no doubt 
 that several of his brothers, the diptera^ or two 
 winged flies, exercise that malevolent office. « Buz- 
 zing round their tails, settling on the dung, and 
 busily looking over for a place where she may lay 
 her young, are various forms of those larger and even 
 more offensive creatures, the meat-fly or blue-bottle, 
 or bronze-coloured cousins of the same kind.)) 
 
 « These creatures, which are the horror of the 
 pedestrian, the horse-man, and the shepherd, are well 
 known to all of us ; they frequent country sides near 
 the bush, wherever wooded districts are found, 
 but do not care so much for open pastures.)) 
 
 Of the sheep, two vulnerable points are their 
 favourites, the head and the tail. Unfortunately, 
 the Southdown breed, having less wool on their 
 heads than other sheep, are not so well protected 
 from the attacks of the fly as are the Shropshires, 
 the Cotswolds, and, in a measure, the Hampshire- 
 downs. As soon as one fly lights on a trifling sore 
 spot, whether caused by the friction of a piece of 
 dirt, or what not, he sets to work to make further 
 discoveries ; soon, others join in the work ; they 
 crowd on to the poor thing's unhappy head and dive 
 into the flesh for a juicy suck, until a broad scald 
 
— 176 — 
 
 extending all over the forehead is effected. You 
 may easily tell when the fly is at work : the sheep 
 runs from place to place, with his head down ; stops 
 suddenly, stamps his feet, in fact is nearly crazy 
 with irritation. How can a sheep thrive that is in 
 such torment ? How comfortable do you feel when 
 the « black-fly » attacks you as you are salmon fishing 
 below Quebec ? 
 
 Hogg, the « Ettrick Shepherd », gives a simple 
 remedy against the fiy. « I happened to be assisting 
 at the sorting of sheep of the Cheviot breed, where 
 sundry of their heads were broke with flies, (i) 
 The shepherds brought them out of the fold with the 
 intention of smearing the sore parts with tar. I 
 advised them to anoint them with coarse whale-oil, 
 such as they mixed with the tar, having several 
 times seen sores softened and healed by it. Some of 
 it being near at hand, they consented. The flies 
 were at this time settled upon the fold in such 
 numbers, that when we went among the sheep we 
 could with difficulty see each other, but to our utter 
 astonishment, when those who were anointed were 
 turned among the rest, in less than a minute not a 
 fly was visible ! » 
 
 Whether this application of whale-oil was a new 
 discovery or not, I do not know ; but it is certain that 
 whale-oil, commonly called train-oil, is now looked 
 
 (i) The essayist is not answerable for Mr. Hog-g's English. 
 
— ^11 — 
 
 upon as a sure safeguard against the attacks of the 
 common fly. A little sulphur mixed with the oil 
 is an improvement. As it is so invariable in its 
 beneficial effects, it is a matter of astonishment that 
 it is not more generally known. 
 
 Of the sheep cap I spoke already at length but 
 it must be borne in mind, as I said b,efore, that a 
 cap must never be put on a head that is already 
 sore, lest an attack from the fly should have pro- 
 duced eggs, and the maggots from the eggs should 
 have hatched and begun their ravages without the 
 shepherd having had a chance to espy them. Some 
 maggots are bred in the dung or in the dirt adher- 
 ing to the coat, and soon make their way into the 
 flesh. There, they produce redness, soreness and 
 an exudation of matter. The symptoms exhibited 
 by the sheep are pretty much the same as those 
 mentioned above. 
 
 The mineral known as v mercury-stone, >, is said, 
 by Mr. Wrightson, to quickly kill the maggot, so 
 shepherds should always carry a piece of this 
 with them. It is just like a piece of slate pencil, 
 and can be got at any chemist's. To part the wool, 
 and thoroughly rub the place affected with the 
 mercury-stone, speedily kills the maggots, which 
 ought, however, to be brushed out by the hand until 
 they are all got rid of. Spirits of tar also has a 
 good effect, and my good friend, Mr, Henry Gray, 
 
 I? 
 
-178- 
 
 of St-Lawreiice Main Street, Montreal, has a very 
 good mixture for the purpose. 
 
 When maggots are neglected, the sheep pulls his 
 wool off with his teeth, and, later, the skin becomes 
 hard and dry and comes off just as if it had been 
 burnt or scalded. 
 
 THE SHEEP BOT-FLY 
 
 This fly is of the same order as the horse-fly. 
 Miss Ormerod, the great authority in England on 
 entomology of all kinds, describes it as being rather 
 larger than the common house-fly, and of an ashy 
 colour, spotted with black. Youatt says « that if 
 only one of these pests appears, the whole flock is 
 in the greatest agitation. » His vile aim is to lay 
 his eggs just in the inner margin of the nostrils : 
 they soon hatch, and at once crawl up the nose 
 until they reach the recesses of the frontal sinuses, 
 where they hang by means of their tentacles till 
 the following summer. 
 
 During the passage up the nostrils they are very 
 troublesome, until they reach their peculiarly se- 
 lected home, when they do not seem to do much 
 harm. Again, when they are ready to find an exit 
 by the nose, in order to change into pupae, the 
 constant sneezing of the sheep is an evidence that 
 they are suffering. The life of the bot-fly is deci- 
 dedly interesting, but as our authorities give no 
 cure for its attacl^s, we will not pursue it any fur* 
 ther. 
 
— 179— . 
 
 THE GID OR STURDY 
 
 Almost every slieep-breeder has noticed that from 
 time to time, not frequently, thank gracious, a 
 mysterious complaint attacks lambs, generally with 
 fatal effect. This is the sturdy or gid^ so called be- 
 cause the lambs under its influence are invariably 
 giddy and turn round from right to left, or the 
 reverse ; sometimes standing as if fixed to the spot, 
 and refusing to move on. Gid is another form of 
 animal parasitism, and owes its origin to one or 
 more cystic, i. e., bladder-like parasite in the brain. 
 
 This parasite invades the brain in the following 
 manner : the bladder-worm, as it is sometimes call- 
 ed, varies in size from a hempseed, when young, to 
 a cricket-ball, when full grown. They are derived 
 from a tapeworm which infest the dog, and are in 
 reality the young of that creature. Just as the 
 maggots that we find in flesh are the young of the 
 blow-fly, so are these hydatids (water-filled sacs) 
 the young of the tapeworm. Each hydatid, how- 
 ever, represents not one but a brood of young tape- 
 worms. How many, may be known by counting 
 the little white spots on the w^alls of the bladder, 
 which are, in fact, the heads from which future 
 tapeworms are to spring, should they, by any chance, 
 find their way into the belly of the dog. Without 
 the dog, and other members of the same species, 
 there could be no gid-parasites, and, consequently, 
 no giddy sheep. The lamb acts as a host towards 
 
— i8o — 
 
 the bladder-worm, that is, it affords it protection, 
 shelter, and food, until it is fitted for its new home 
 in the dog, where it begins at once to throw out 
 segments and become a complete tapeworm. It is 
 all very wonderful ; without sheep, and others of 
 the same species, there could be no tapeworm. 
 Neither the h3^datid nor the tapeworm can be pleas- 
 ant guests ; the former by its growth and expansion 
 breaks down the brain and paralyses its host ; the 
 latter reduces the dog to a skeleton, and sometimes 
 causes its sudden death by epilepsy. 
 
 To get rid of the gid, it must be remembered that 
 its habitat is the brain, and that, consequently, great 
 care in the manipulation is necessary. Some punc- 
 ture the bladder or cyst with a sharp instrument, 
 and draw out the fluid with a syringe ; but as this 
 generally requires to be repeated, it is not much to 
 be depended upon for a cure. All the dogs on the 
 farm should be watched closely, and if any segments 
 of the tapeworm are seen in their excrements, they 
 should be shut up and not allowed to leave the 
 kennel until the worm is completely got rid of. A 
 dose of areca-nut, followed by a good dose of castor- 
 oil, should be administered, and every atom of tape- 
 worm, expelled by the medicine, should be burned. 
 
 THK TICK 
 
 When sheep are seen to take ever3^opportunit3'of 
 rubbing themselves against posts, &:c., it may gen- 
 
— i8i — 
 
 erally be concluded that they are troubled with the 
 tick. The little beast is small, with a red head, and 
 its body is of a pale yellow-colour. The tick fre- 
 quents both sides of the sheep's neck, and the inside 
 of both shoulders and thighs. When sheep are 
 dipped, ticks will not often be found troublesome. 
 
 DIARRHCEA 
 
 Commonly called by shepherds, white scours. 
 Not dangerous if taken in time. Our usual cure 
 for it, in the South of England, was a change on to 
 a piece of sainfoin. Sain-foin^ from the French 
 signifies « wholesome hay.)) Nothing causes scouring 
 so often as a change from a bare pasture to a very 
 luxuriant one ; or a sudden flush of grass after a spell 
 of rain, will have the same effect. A table-spoonful 
 of castor oil, with a dash of ginger in it will do good 
 but attention to the food of the flock is the 
 main thing. Too much tampering with physic in 
 the herd or the flock is a dangerous thing, and now 
 that veterinary surgeons are to be found in every 
 the smallest town in the province, one of these 
 practitioners should be called in if any unusual 
 symptoms appear to invade the flock. 
 
— l82 — 
 A HEROIC TREATMENT 
 
 {From the FrencJi) 
 
 ({An experiment. In July, 1885, I tried the fol- 
 lowing experiment. Having found in the fields one 
 of my Shropshire ewes, with a lamb at her foot, that 
 was very weak and poor in condition, hardly able 
 to stand, and at the point of death, I had her, and 
 her lamb, taken at once to the sheep-shed, about 
 three miles from the place where I found them. 
 
 (( She was very ill ; her nostrils were choked up, 
 and her head so obstructed that it seemed as if suffo- 
 cation must immediately take place. The following 
 is the treatment I pursued : 
 
 « I drenched her with three half-pints of linseed- 
 tea, and, half an hour after, I poured into the ears 
 three half-pints of warm brine from the pork-barrel. 
 The next day the dose was repeated ; within thirty 
 minutes after this treatment, she was up on her feet 
 and trying to eat some hay. For food, I gave her 
 a little bran with some oatmeal and hay ; her drink 
 consisted of three half-pints of linseed tea thrice a 
 day. After three days of this treatment, I gave her 
 the lamb again, which she suckled as before : and 
 in a week's time she was feeding away as usual in 
 the fields. The lamb I sold in September for ten 
 dollars, and the ewe remained with me in perfect 
 health.)) 
 
-183- 
 
 As for making ewe-milk cheese, we have seen 
 quite enough of that on the « Borders. » The pail 
 has to be placed under the tail of the ewe when she 
 is being milked, and, in spite of all the care taken 
 by the milker, it is easy to see that filth, both liquid 
 and solid, will fall into it : not a nice idea ! Mr. 
 Chapais states that the Larzac ewes, from whose 
 milk the celebrated Roquefort cheese is made, give, 
 after having weaned their lambs, 55 quarts of milk, 
 from which 24 lbs of cheese are made, in 160 days, 
 which is equal to 2.40 oz. a day. Would the value 
 of this pay for the labour expended ? Would it be 
 worth while to wear out the ewe, who [needs all 
 possible means of recovering her strength after 
 weaning her lamb, for such a trifle as 24 pounds of 
 cheese ? 
 
 Mr. Chapais makes the milk of the ewe contain 
 seven and a half per cent, of butter and six per 
 cent of casein. Stewart, in his book, « Feeding 
 animals, » gives the following as the average com- 
 position of ewe's milk : 
 
 Casein 4.50 
 
 Butter 4.20 
 
 8.70 
 
 Whereas, according to Mr. Chapais, the ewe of 
 Larzac gives ; 
 
— i84 — 
 
 Casein 6.00 
 
 Butter 7.50 
 
 13-50 
 
 I^eaving a balance in favour of the Larzac ewe of 
 ,80 ! 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 Page 
 A 
 
 Age of Sheep . . . , i6o 
 
 B 
 
 Border-Leicester . . , 34 
 
 Bot-Fly ij8 
 
 C 
 
 Canker (Thrush or) 1 70 
 
 Caps 115 
 
 Castration 107 
 
 Cotswold 36 
 
 D 
 
 Diarrhoea 181 
 
 Dipping 97 
 
 Disease of Sheep 166 
 
 Dorset-Horn j^ 
 
 Drafting the Flock 94 
 
— i86 — 
 
 Page 
 
 E 
 
 Ewe-tegs , 139 
 
 F 
 
 Flies 174 
 
 Folds 132 
 
 Foods (Mixed) 1 20 
 
 Foot-Rot 171 
 
 G 
 
 Gid (or Sturdy) 179 
 
 H 
 
 Hampshire-Down 48 
 
 Horsebeans 136 
 
 Hurdles 112-130 
 
 L 
 
 Lambing 100 
 
 Lambs after weaning 129 
 
 Leicester 25 
 
 Leicester (Border) 34 
 
 Leicester (Improved) 29 
 
 Lincoln 3^ 
 
i87 
 
 Page 
 M 
 
 Management of the Flock 78 
 
 Mixed Foods 120 
 
 O 
 
 Oxfordshire-Down 57 
 
 R 
 
 Racks 87 
 
 Rams 95 
 
 Rot 167 
 
 Rot (Foot) 171 
 
 S 
 
 Sainfoin 121 
 
 Shearing Sheep 147 
 
 Show-Sheep 124 
 
 Shropshire 61 
 
 Southdown 41 
 
 Sturdy (Gid or) 179 
 
 Suffolk-Downs 70 
 
 T 
 
 Tares or Vetches 109 
 
 Thrush or Canker 170 
 
— i88 — 
 
 Page 
 
 Tick 180 
 
 V 
 
 Vetches (Tares or) 109 
 
 W 
 
 Washing Sheep 147 
 
 Weaning (I^ambs after) 129 
 
 Weaning of Lambs 117 
 
 « /<s