SHEEP AND IMPROVED FARMING.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2661, 17 October 1882, Page 3

SHEEP AND IMPROVED FARMING.

Shaep have played a most important part in the improvement of the soil in all civilised countries. At an early period, sheep were kept mostly for their wool in all countries j but as populations increased, and greater demand was made upon the soil to furnish food, mutton became the principal object of sheep farming, and wool the incident. During this transition state, skilful breeders made a long, careful, and practical study in improving the carcass and its early maturity. Instead of keeping sheep to their full age as breeders and producers of wool, the most persevering effort was made to mature them for a profitable market at the earliest date. This was done by judicious in breeding, and the most generous feeding. The sheep, like other animals, was found plastic in the hands of a skilful breeder and feeder. It was soon found that the improved Southdown and Cots wold could be fitted for the most profitable market at from six to fifteen months old, except those required for breeders, and these were most profitably turned at four to five years old, instead of at seven to ten years. This transition to the strictly mutton breeds was first accomplished in England, in the perfection of the Leicester, Cotswold, and Southdown. Franco is succeeding in transforming the merino into a profitable mutton breed, by the moat generous system, of feeding. This transformation was produced at tho breeding establishment of Bnmbouillet. At this establishment, the small-bodied, short-fibered, thin-fleshed, slowmaturing merino has become of larger size, carries a slightly coarser and longer fibre, a heavier carcase, and a heavier fleece, more readily takes on flesh, and matures much earlier. American merinos, in the hands of skillful breeders and feeders, are undergoing the same transformation. But still these sheep are not as well adapted to the production of mutton as the English mutton breeds ; and, in this country, a cross between the Cotswold and the merino has given satisfaction to some skillful breeders who have made it. ....

The consumption of mufcfon is increasing in America, especially in our large cities, and it has become profitable to supply this demand. It is profitable, first, became the price is remunerative, and secondly, because it is promotive of good husbandry—the improvement of the soil. , . . The various cereal crops are depleting, rapidly exhausting to the soil; but a crop of mutton or wool takes but an imperceptible fraoti n, and, under the best management, adds to its fertility. The mineral matter taken from the soil by a five pound fleece of wool is only 1.6 ounces in a year, and 5 ounces of nitrogen. In order that the reader may see what part of the food is stored!! up in the body of the sheep, and what is passed in the solid and liquid excrement, wa will quote from the German tables of experiments It was found that when sheep consumed lOOib. of nitrogen in their food (being barley meal), 16 71b. was voided in the solid excrement, 791 b. in the liquid excrement, and 4.31 b. ■ was stored up as an increase of the body. Thus 95 7 par cent, of the nitrogen of the food was voided in the excrement, leaving as a low to the soil (stored up m the bedy) only 4 3 per cent. ■-£ the mineral or ash constituents of the iood it was found that sheep voided in the excrement 96 2 per nnd used in the body only 3 8 per cent. When sheep were fed upon good clover and meadow h%y the eolid excrement contained of am, 3.5 per cent.; of nitrogen, 0 7 P® r whilst the urine oontamed—of ash, 5 6 per osnt.: of nitrogen, 1.4 percent. , . The clover crop is believed to aocumu-ftIL nitrogen in the soil by absorbing it air, and. as we see, it is nearly all recovered in the excrement of the sheep. I*» then, clover and other grasses are fed off upon land by sheep the fertility is even I “°^ o a ß ®, ’ This explains the Spanish proverb that the foot of tne sheep is golden.” We wish also to call the reader’s attention to the important fact found in these experiments that the urine is much more valuable than the solid excrement. This also holds in the excrement of other stock. What a tremendous loss, then, occurs when the liquid is allowed to wash off into the nearest stream. How very > important that farmers should prevent this loss.