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Show v I hTthrough the sale of lambs and through the gaining of valuable fertilizer ferti-lizer to build up soil fertility. We jl hear of several San Joaquin Valley deciduous fruit growcm "who are bail ba-il ginning to raise small farm flocks ' with' profit. This sort of farm activi-;1 activi-;1 ty is in its infancy. It was impossi- ble to develop the small farm flock In ' California until in recent years, due ' to lack of marketing facilities. Now, ? however, with the public1 market such r as is maintained at the Los Angeles y Union Stock Yards, It Is just as sim-r sim-r pie and satisfactory to market a truck load of Iambs, or other live stock, as to market stock by the carload or trainload. kSituatioix, i - ' The western range country has about reached its (practical limit In lamb production, following several years of .intense building up of range flocks. Many of the historic old cattle ranches have turned to sheep. Outstanding in this respect is the state of Texas, which until a feM 5 ears ago was almost strictly a oat-tie oat-tie state. It is now the largest sheep growing state in the union. California has developed her sheep business intensely. As far back as 1SC0, the California, sheep population, exclusive of lambs, was estimated at only slightly more than one million. Production has had its ups an'd downs since that time, the population in 19-20 19-20 being only 1,784,000. But in the I'ast nine years, largely as a result of profitable production and development develop-ment of a broad market for early California lambs on the eastern seaboard, sea-board, California's sheep population by 1925 reached 2,332,000 and on January Jan-uary 1, 1929, the sheep population in California was 3,S50,000, and Califor-ria Califor-ria now has the distinction of being the greatest lamb producing state. But with such rapid growth in range flocks, over-stocking has been one of the serious evils in many instances, in-stances, not only in California but in other western states. The result is that if rainfall is not sufficient to provide enough feed, a large proportion propor-tion of the lambs do not fatten. Sup plemental fee'ds, such as cottonseed cake, will carry the ewes through a dry season but the fattening of the lamb is another problem. The marketing of thin and half-fat lambs has proven to be a serious problem to western lamb producers. If the thin lambs are slaughtered, the carcasses are not satisfactory ana lamb consumption is reduced. The slogan of western lamb producers pro-ducers must be "better sheep, but not more sheep". But this does not mean that there is not room for real, dyed-in-the-wool sheepmen to get into the sheep' business in California, because as the old saying goes, "there is always al-ways room at the top". With proper merchandising and the resultant increase in the popularl-tr popularl-tr of lamb, there seems to be little danger of overdoing lamb production. However, students of the situation feel that any future expansion of iamb production must come from the small flocks carried as a side line on fruit and grain ranches, and small farms. Quality production must be practiced in such instances for real profit The most satisfactory way to relieve the range 'would be to spread out the feeder lambs among the small ranchers, using our grain and forage for fattening. Quite a few citrus growers in Southern South-ern California are carrying lambs in their orchards, reaping a double pro- |