Title

The Sheep

Bulletin No.

177

Document Type

Bulletin

Department

Department of Animal Husbandry

Description

The sheep is one of the most profitable animals on the farm. Besides increasing the fertility of the land sheep furnish two incomes during the year, namely; from the sale of wool in the summer and from the sale of lambs in ·the fall or winter. Sheep are economical meat producers, requiring less than the average number of pounds of feed to produce a pound of gain. This gain usually brings as much in the market as gain made by any other meat-producing animal. The gain is oftentimes made under conditions where other animals would starve, and also from vegetation in fields which would probably otherwise be a waste. Sheep have no equal as a weed destroyer, eating nearly all the weeds and grasses found on the farm. I have seen sheep in the dry lot eat Canadian thistles given with green feed. By eating these ,weeds and weed seeds sheep aid in getting the farm into a better state of cultivation. Sheep need pasture up :to the time grain is stacked, but from then on they will live and do well in the stubble field where rape has been sown with the small grain, until after corn is husked, then they do well in the stalk field.· The lambs at weaning time can be turned into the cornfield and they will eat the corn leaves and husks, do well, and get in condition for the butcher before they learn to eat corn from the ear. The object of this bulletin is to furnish information on the care of sheep for the production of mutton and wool. For convenience, we have treated the two subjects separately. Since the editions of nearly all our bulletins at this Station on feeding sheep are exhausted, we also include herein some of the results o.f our former experiments.

Keywords

sheep, lambs, wool

Pages

16

Publication Date

3-1918

Type

text

Format

application/pdf

Language

en

Publisher

South Dakota Experiment Station, South Dakota State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts

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