MORTALITY AMONG SHEEP.

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 221, 24 January 1894, Page 2

MORTALITY AMONG SHEEP.

TO 'IHK KOITOH OK TUK STAK. Sin, — Mr Wilks. in his effusion of the loth, seems very much annoyed that 1 should have had the audacity to assume my experience amongst sheep was of mcro weight and value than his. Well, Mr Editor, if I had not assumed so, I should certainly not have taken the trouble to answer such unpractical letters as Mr Wilks indites. Mr Wilks boasts of twenty years" experience, directly and indirectly, and actually owned a flock of sheep when only twelve years old. What did the flock consist of Mr Wilks ? A pet lamb and a billy goat ? Any person who has slept between blankets and eaten mutton can, I suppose, claim the same experience as Mr Wilks has had prior to his occupying the farm he is now on, as to my own knowledge, he has not takeu an active part in farming matters for at least nine years before that time. Mr Wilks has posed as an authority on so many subjects relative to farming, good perhaps in theory, but utterly unpractical viz., bee culture, ensilage, the curing of lung worm with an infusion of peach leaves, the growing aud cultivation of lavender, burning bush with the aid of kerosene, and numerous other things derived no doubt from those thousand and one books he says he has read. Mr Wilks once informed two of his neighbours that sheep clipping was a custom — not a necessity — and gave them a description of his mode of procedure, which was as i follows : He examined his sheep until he discovered a tick or other vermin and then with a bowl of dip sprinkled that said sheep, and so on right through his - flock. Here now is the outcome of twenty years' experience, which if Mr Wilks had made public would have saved farmers in this district considerable sums of money in the erecting of dips, etc. I mention Mr Wilks' dipping plan to show what an unpractical and inexj perienced man as regards sheep he is. and to prevent farmers who have not the pleasure of being acquainted with I Mr Wilks' farming quoting him as an authority. In conclusion, if Mr Wilks takes the trouble to enquire he will find farmers do not complain of losses after docking nearly so much as they do to the loss af hoggets between the months of June and September. Fight away Mr Wilks for your dry wind and high barometer as much as you like, but I imagine that a different wind with a substantial honorarium at the end of it is what you are fighting for. I am, etc., , R. S. Fowlkh. I