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Show I SHEEP ON THE RANGE An intereitiog iccount of the sheep industry in New Mexico is presented by F. J, Ilnskin in his story nf the ' Shepherds of the Desert." Stating that the shfplu-nier prt.s h is bftCO-n and beans ami per haps 40 I month, Mr. Haskin says: The tendency is to riisfl more feed for the sheep, build more shelters and more fences, improve the hreed and take better ear- f the Itock. Hut this change is coming .slowly. For the most part the sheep are still raised on the open range as the were a hundred years ago For this work Mexican! ;trr indispensable, and timr methods and habits are as Ulfchanging as the mountains. The theep range is most of the state. Fart of it is public pub-lic land, part of it is in the preat Spanish land prants and pari und ; the forest service, but altogether it is a stretch of mountain and desert and mesa land, nnfenced, untamed rind untamable. To realize the sweep and emptiness of n you must see it. There are man) high points from which you Can look serosa a hundred miles of wilderness and see nothing noth-ing that you can certainly identify as the work of men. The sheep are ranged in the mountain during the summer, sum-mer, and an driven down to the hnrrendooking me.n lands when the first mows come They arc brought together once a year for sheltering and dipping .it some headquarters. The jest of the time th sheepherders 'never t ailed shep-herda shep-herda in this country) sfollow them across ihe range it is common for these men to be away from home for six months, and they have been known to stay for eighteen months Hack in L889 a severe blizzard swept over the intermountain re-gjon re-gjon and the winter of 1889-90 was disastrous to half the sheep herds of Utah, Nevada and adjoining states From then on the sheepmen began to change their methods and provisions were math for winter feeding. Since that time the losses to the bands on desert ranges have been much reduced and stdl there is room for improvement One owner of sheep, who went into the v.-inter of 1Ss'i-)0 with 1 1 ,(() head, came out in the spring with 1500 Now there is never a os, sn 1 1 .-1 1 i complete and vet, with prope feeding or the making available of feed, the owners could be saved from severe reverses Hut to place the sheep induatrj on a safer footing, the exp tiacs would be too heavy to bear. That is why the sheepman, with Ips herds on the ranpe, aecepts the risks which now and then bring financial fi-nancial disaster |