Sheep and Cattle.

Fair Play, Volume I, Issue 8, 23 December 1893, Page 24

Sheep and Cattle.

Can mutton be more cheaply produced than beef? "As bearing upon this subject Stewart calls attention to the fact-that the sheep is a source of double incomemeat and wool. He refers, too, to the experiments of Sir J. B. Lawes in reference to the percentage of-food utilized or stored up by different animals, and these experiments presented the sheep in a very favorable light.. Of the dry food consumed he found that sheep stored up increased weight 12 per cent., while cattle only laid up in increased weight 8 per cent. —that is, eight and one-half pounds of dry food increased the live weight of cattle.

So that, relying upon these experiments, sheep must be considered as excellent utilizers of food, as producing as many pounds of mutton, besides the wool,.from a given quantity of food, as can be produced of beef; and as the best mutton brings as high a price as the beef, it would appear on this basis the sheep would give the fleece as extra profit over cattle. If this is not too fa-* vorable a view, the sheep on suitable lands must be considered among the most profitable of farm stock. It is true the dairy cow brings her. profitable flow of milk to offset that of wool; but the dairy cow does not lay on flesh 'while producing milk, as does the sheep while producing wool. A fleece of five pounds of wool grown in a year requires only a daily growth of one-fifth of an ounce, which can take but a small portion of food to produce. The mineral matter taken from the soil by the fleece is only 1.8 ounces per year, and if six half mutton sheep represent a cow, the whole mineral constituents taken by the six fleeces would only be 9.6 ounces, and about 1.9 pounds of nitrogen, while the ordinary cow, yielding 4,000 pounds of milk, would take' twenty-six pounds of mineral matter or ash and twenty-five of nitrogen, or forty-three times as much mineral matter and thirteen times as much nitrogen as the fleeces of the sheep. —Stockman.