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Show KSWOvestock?! USi, w ! H Los Angeles, California, February, Febru-ary, IS, 1935 California's huge volume of early lambs will soon be moving into retail meat channels, chan-nels, apparently with somewhat better prospects of profit to the producers than has been the case in recent years. The crop is expected ex-pected to be somewhat smaller than has been the case for some time as there has been a gradual decline in sheep population since the peak was reached in 1932. Of greatest interest to the thousands thou-sands of California and Arizona sheepmen has been the greatly decreased de-creased cost of production on this spring's crop. Especially has this been true in California, where early rains and warm weather brought out green feed for the ewes, and continued moisture through the winter has given the producers one of the best grass years the state has had in a long time. In other recent years, heavy feeding of hay and concentrates has been necessary through the early winter months. Last year, sheepmen were forced to continue dry feeding of both ewes and lambs in many sections, the result being high costs of production. Relatively high beef and pork prices, it is generally agreed, should be helpful to a satisfactory lamb price structure. Another factor that is being watched is the supply of dry fed lambs in the colder states. Due to a relatively low fat lamb market during the past several months, there has been a disposition on the part of feeders to stint on feed and market lambs in half-fat condition. Fed lambs so far have failed to share fully in the general price upturn that started in with the close of 1934. It is generally believed be-lieved that most of the fed lambs in Colorado, Nebraska and middle western states will be pretty well out of the way for the California lambs on eastern markets. As far as the extreme western states are concerned, there are very few lambs on feed and all of these will be out of the way well ahead of the early lamb crop. The excellent green feed conditions condi-tions in California should result in a large percentage of fat lambs off grass, but there is some fear that the grass lambs will get too heavy for average trade demands. Many a lamb grower will find that he has 90 to 100-pound lambs where last year and in ordinary seasons, similar lambs at the some age would do well to reach 75 to 80 pounds weight. Sheepmen would do well to watch this situation as it might often be possible to cut cut fat lambs earlier than usual for earlier markets and relatively better prices. o |