Sheep, Swine, and Poultry: Embracing the History and Varieties of Each; The Best Modes of Breeding; Their Feeding and Management; Together with etc.Jennings, Robert
Science
Sheep, Swine, and Poultry: Embracing the History and Varieties of Each; The Best Modes of Breeding; Their Feeding and Management; Together with etc.
Jennings, Robert
Poultry; Sheep; Swine
These movable sheds may be connected with hay-barns--"hay-barracks"--or
they may surround an inclosed space with a stack in the middle. In the
latter case, the yard should be square, on account of the divergence in
the lower ends of the boards or poles, which a round form would render
necessary.
Sheds of this description are frequently made between two stacks. The
end of the horizontal supporting-pole is placed on the stack-pens when
the stacks are built, and the middle is propped by crotched posts. The
supporting-pole may rest, in the same way, on the upper girts of two
hay-barracks; or two such sheds, at angles with each other, might form
wings to this structure.
On all large sheep-farms, convenience requires that there be one barn of
considerable size, to contain the shearing-floor, and the necessary
conveniences about it for yarding the sheep, etc. This should also, for
the sake of economy, be a hay-barn, where hay is used. It may be
constructed in the corner of four fields, so that four hundred sheep can
be fed from it, without racking flocks of improper size. At this barn it
would be expedient to make the best shelters, and to bring together all
the breeding-ewes on the farm, if their number does not exceed four
hundred. The shepherd would thus be saved much travel at all times, and
particularly at the lambing-time, and each flock would be under his
almost constant supervision.
The size of this barn is a question to be determined entirely by the
climate. For large flocks of sheep, the storage of some hay or other
fodder for winter is an indispensable precautionary measure, at least in
any part of the United States; and, other things being equal, the
farther north, or the more elevated the land, the greater would be the
amount necessary to be stored.
HAY-HOLDER. Where hay or other fodder is thrown out of the upper door of
a barn into the sheep-yard--as it always must necessarily be in any mere
hay-barn--or where it is thrown from a barrack or stack, the sheep
immediately rush on it, trampling it and soiling it, and the succeeding
forkfuls fall on their backs, filling their wool with dust, seed, and
chaff. This is obviated by hay-holders--yards ten feet square--either
portable, by being made of posts and boards, or simply a pen of rails,
placed under the doors of the barns, and by the sides of each stack or
barrack. The hay is pitched into this holder in fair weather, enough for
a day's foddering at a time, and is taken from it by the fork and placed
in the racks.
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