Iso

ON THE LIVE-STOCK

are but a few days old, if the weather will permit, instead ofdelaying till the end of the lambing season, as is still the casein some instances. The lambs are lifted over the fold totheir pasture, as soon as the operation is finished, and care-fully prevented from lying long at a time, by a person whogoes among them and rouses them to exertion. If they bleedfreely, and the weather continue mild and dry, there is sel-dom any considerable loss sustained, nor do they require anytopical applications.

13. Towards the end of the lambing season, the ewes thathave not yet dropped lambs, are separated from the flock, andkept by themselves, that they may be more under the eye ofthe shepherd, than if scattered over all the pasture. It isdesirable to allow them finer grass for a few weeks after lamb-ing, that their lambs may come to be nearly equal to the restof the flock when weaned; or, if they are too late for this, thatthey may get ready for the butcher by the month of August,beyond which period the ewes must be much injured bysuckling them.

These are the principal circumstances to be attended to, inthe management of a ewe stock, from the beginning of No-vember till about the middle of May. In several situations,there are other arrangements which a judicious store-farmerintroduces into his management. If he has the convenienceof inclosures, and a variety of pasture, he draws out, in themonth of October, the ewes to be disposed of in the follow-ing season, puts the rams to them two or three weeks earlierthan to the rest of his flock, gets the lambs ready for thebutcher in June, and makes their dams very good muttonby the end of the grass season. There are not many farms,however, where a breeding stock of Cheviot sheep is kept,which admits of this practice. On farms of this description,the more common stock is, either a cross-breed between Lei-cester rams and Cheviot ewes, or draft ewes of the Cheviotbreed, which are bought every autumn, and after having fat-tened their lambs, are all sold off in the course of the next