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Sheep

Sheep image
Parent Issue
Day
9
Month
March
Year
1882
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The crying need of American agriculture to-day is a more general incorporation of the sneep into the farming econoiny. More proliflc than horses or cattle, as well as more tractable, subsistiag on scantiér herbage and requiring less supervisión, it claims the additional advantage of "paying for its raising" in animal instalments of marketable fleece, pending its growth to maturity. It is more readily transfeïred f rom one inclosure to another, and is easily restrained by fences which would prove no barrier agaiust the encroachment of other farm stock, lts light tread and love of repose warrant its access to flelds and pastures where tramping of cattle and tearing of hogs would not be tolerated. It wastes less food, in proportion to the qtiantity consumed, and will hunt and utilize much that would otherwise be lost to the farmer. Yielding a return in both fleece and flesh, it furnishes its owner with the doublé advantage of catching a good market f or his product, requiring less water and disposed to work for its food. It is without a peer when summer's drought taxes the farmer'a resources for enabling his live stock to maintain an average of thrift and flesh. All that can be said in behalf of feeding live stock on the farm, as distinguished from the soil impoverishing policy of placing the raw grain and grass upon the market, will be found to apply with doublé emphasis to the farm that carries as a part of its outfit one or more sheep per acre. ïfo other animal returns more fertility to soil in proportion to the amount exacted for its support, while none equals it in the evenness with which the droppings are tributed. Notwithstanding the evident advantages an increaae in sheep culture brings tbe agriculture of a country generally, and especiallifrinuring to the benefit of such farmers as incorpórate it into their system, the f act is apparent that sheep are not so numerous or so evenly distributed as they should

Article

Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Democrat