ONE EWE’S PERFORMANCE

Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4500, 4 September 1930, Page 1

ONE EWE’S PERFORMANCE

■SEVEN LA.MBS IN A YE Ah’. AN AMERICAN RECORD. In an American slicep paper, Mr. W. F. Existing, Anchorage, Kentucky, tells the story about a Dorset Horn-ewe, Dixie No. 8, that produced and raised seven real Dorset Horn lambs within a year. She had to be a heavy milker. These lambs were not grainfed, and were raised entirely by this ewe. On February 7, 1926, this ewe dropped four lambs. On June 10, 1926, these lambs were weighed. The weights xvere 104, 1041, 105 and 1061 b. respectively, a total for tlie four of 4191ib. in 18 weeks and. two days. But the ewe w*.* not satisfied with her production record for the year, so in November she dropped three lambs just as good, mothered them just as well, and made them just as fat as the four dropped in February.

It is one of the characteristics .peculiar to Dorset Horns to lamb twice within a twelve-month period. This characteristic is transmitted to the grades, when using pure-bred Dorset Horn rams. In A.D. 79, of course, Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed as a result of a combined attack ef earthquakes and Vesuvius. Even that catastrophe, although the best known, must have been comparatively puny compared to other efforts. In some eases lives lost are counted by the ten thousand. In 1173 in Sicily an earthquake distroved no fewer than 15,000 persons, and as recently as 1841, 14,800 were lost as the result of a shock which destroyed one town completely. In parts of Italy, indeed, earthquakes contribute a large proportion of the normal death rate. In the course of 75 years, from 1783 to 1857, the Kingdom of Naples lost at least 110,000 inhabitants by the effects of earthquakes. This works out at a rate of 1500 a year, out of a total population of only six millions.