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Show LIVE STOCK COLUMN. WHAT THE SHEEP HUSBANDRY Or THE FUTURE WILL BE. Important Changes In the Ideas and Methods of Sheep Raisers in Recent j Years The Sheep That Pays Must Produce Pro-duce Both Wool and Mutton. Sheep raisers are abandoning the ideaa they held in the past, which have so poorly served during the last five years, and are gaining in a sound knowledge of breeding, feeding and marketing principles. prin-ciples. They are establishing themselves in wiser business practices, more in practical harmony with the facts that must prevail in this country. There is a disjKisition to compete, if we must compete with outsiders, in the most efficient and effectual manner. There is a willingness to eliminate the weak points in our sheep husbandry, and work only for that which has proved itself substantial. They leave theories and pursue facts. They intend to profit by the past wealmesses and errors that formerly deluded them. They have confidence con-fidence in themselves, in their abilities and capacities, and in the national integrity in-tegrity and legislation. Lf a period of unprecedented prosperity for sheep and wool has not well begun in this country the writer fails to read the signs of the times. If a sheep combining com-bining mutton and wool in a higher degree de-gree than has hitherto been recognized by some of us old fogies cannot be the basis of a permanent prosperity then the experience of the last few years has been a business delusion. Such, however, it has not been; it has surpassed all reasonable reason-able expectations and silenced all opposition oppo-sition and cant; it has been demonstrated in financial prosperity at a time when a wool bearing sheep proper has been discarded, dis-carded, save under the restricted circumstances circum-stances to which it must specially belong. Circumstances unlooked for and unexpected unex-pected have freed the more progressive sheep raisers from the theories and bond age of the p:ist, set up truth and business busi-ness methods that will not fail to secure prosperity in hard times, and which will not have to be abandoned in good times. Sheep raising is as practicable on the western and southern ranges as in the grass lands of Virginia and West Virginia, Virgin-ia, or as on the grain farms of Kentucky or Illinois. It promises to be a relief to the western ranchmen and the fanners of Ohio. It has saved the sheep husbandry of New York and Massachusetts, as well as the ranchmen of Texas. It has succeeded suc-ceeded wherever tried, and where it has uot been tried there have been complaints com-plaints and distress. Cor. Rural New Yorker. |