. Profitable stock feeding; a book for the farmer . ing mutton typemay be obtained to be of great assistance to oneengaged in sheep raising. Digestive Capacity of Sheep.—In their capacityto consume food, sheep resemble cattle. They havethe four stomachs, one connected with another, thepaunch, or first, being very capacious, so that largequantities of bulky food, like hay, can be digested andassimilated. It is customary to figure that eight orten average-sized sheep will consume as much as onetwo-year-old steer. The proportion of roughness tograin most suitable for fattening sheep is about thes
. Profitable stock feeding; a book for the farmer . ing mutton typemay be obtained to be of great assistance to oneengaged in sheep raising. Digestive Capacity of Sheep.—In their capacityto consume food, sheep resemble cattle. They havethe four stomachs, one connected with another, thepaunch, or first, being very capacious, so that largequantities of bulky food, like hay, can be digested andassimilated. It is customary to figure that eight orten average-sized sheep will consume as much as onetwo-year-old steer. The proportion of roughness tograin most suitable for fattening sheep is about thesame as for fattening cattle, though sheep will fattenupon a somewhat larger proportion of hay. On ac-count of their smaller size they consume less perfectlythe coarsest fodder, as whole cornstalks, for whichreason such fodder is sometimes first run through acutting machine. Sheep grind their food, however,much more thoroughly than do cattle, thus making itpossible to feed grain without first grinding or soak-ing it. 198 PROFITABLE STOCK CHAPTER XIX. THE FARMERS BREEDING FLOCK. Fences.—In the West, farms are often not prop-erly fenced for pasturing a breeding flock of ordinary two or three strand barbed wire cattlefence will not hold sheep. If the lower wires arefarther apart than six inches, sheep are likely to crowdbetween. Their heavy covering of wool preventsthem from being badly scratched, on account of whichbarbs are less effective than with other classes of farmanimals. Five strands of well-stretched barbed wire,five, six, seven, eight, and ten inches apart, thoseclosest being at the bottom, will turn sheep, and asixth wire one foot above will make it suitable alsofor cattle. For lambs the wires should not be morethan four inches apart. Any barbed wire fence willmean the loss of more or less wool. The most satis-factory fence for sheep, although it is a little moreexpensive, is one of the approved woven pat-terns. A 24-inch strip of woven wire
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectfeeds, bookyear1906
