THE SHEEP INDUSTRY IN AMERICA.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 13096, 22 April 1908, Page 6

THE SHEEP INDUSTRY IN AMERICA.

New Zealand pastoralists no doubt read with interest the cable message in Monday's issue announcing that 1500 wool growers in four American States had formed themselves into a combine to force up the price of wool to tho Eastern mills. The news suggested the possibility of the proposed operations creating a stronger demand ou tho part of the mills for foreign wool, seeing that already they take a share of tho New Zealand clip, lb may also have caused some surprise that the sheep-growing industry should havo assumed such dimensions in a part of the United States where once the "cattle barons" held undisputed sway. Many of us, probably, get our ideas of American life and conditions from American fiction, and tho conditions that produced "The Virginian" | and all the joyous company of cowboys I that throng Anlerican novels and

magazines were so much more picturesque than those that have since

produced the sheep-herder, that the latter has hardly yet received his share of the literary limelight. Yet the chango has come about under circumstances that, of themselves, were savagely picturesque. The war in the West between the cattle men and the sheep men is a war which has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and scores, possibly hundreds, of lives.

"For twenty yea.s," says a recent writer, 'the sheep man has fought for " overy foot of ground he has gained in "the West. He has fought pitched "battles with cattle men and ranchers, " and has seen his _he_p slaughtered " by tens of thousands, and his herders " killed or driven in ignominy from the "disputed territory. But always the "sheep owner has come back across "the 'dead line' until finally his "enemy has yielded place." The war still lingers in the wildest? parts, and only a few months ago, in Northern Wyoming, a sheep camp was raided, tho sheep were killed or driven away, and tlie herders' waggons wero burned. But the sheep men no longer take such an.outrage "lying down", in this case they offered largo rewards for tho detection of tho raiders, they armed their herders and employed armed guards, and let the cattle men know that if they wanted a fight they could get it. Sheep-ranching in Western America presents many points of difference from sheep farming" in New Zealand. Tlie sheep owners, we are told, have usually two "ranges" for their flocks—a summer range and a winter range. The former often lies above, the timber lino on the mountains, where for three months tho sheep feed on tho thick nutritious grasses that clothe tho mountain sides. In early autumn they are taken down to the high .plateau country adjacent to tho Rockies, where the snows melt fast and do not drift. Each flock of 2000 to 2500 sheep is under the charge of a herder, who lives in a covered waggon in winter, and in a tent in summer, and has duties that a New Zealand shepherd noWer dreams of. He has to guard his flock against coyotes and wolves, he has to watch for rattlesnakes, and he has to take care lest in changing the feeding ground he lets the sheep get among "poison weed," which may kill them by scores. Occasionally a snowstorm may blot out a country side and smother sheep and herders, and there is peril of electrical storms, which havo cost many a herder his life. The number of sheep in the United States- is decreasing, apparently every year. . Fivo years ago there were sixtyfour million., last year there were rather more than fiftywthree mfflionß, and it is believed that in January of the present year the total was fully a million leas. The drop is duo to the rapid increase in the demaind for mutton and lamb, which makes it profitablo to buy _hsep in the autumn in, sa_. Wyoming, mil thiem to certain places "near Denver, in Colorado, handfeed thorn in pens thero during the winter on sugar beet pulp and lucerne, and sell them in the Chicago markets in the spring. Witih the decrease in „io number of sheep, the clip has naturally decreased. and l__t year it was twenty-six million pounds less than it was five years before. It still, however, represents somo 700,000 bales. Efforts are being mad© at a Goven_memt e-perrmenital station to produce an ideal sheep for th© Western ranges, which shall carry a heavy fleece and provide exoellentt mutton, and when j this object is obfained itt is hoped that the United States will become independent of other wool-producing countries, and. the first, instead of tho third, of the sheep-breeding countries of tho world-