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
Where there are orphans or supernumeraries in the flock, the deserted
lambs must be brought up by hand. Such animals, called pet lambs, are
supported on cow's milk, which they receive warm from the cows each time
they are milked, and as much as they can drink. In the intervals of
meals, in bad weather, they are kept under cover; in good weather they
are put into a grass enclosure during the day, and sheltered at night
until the nights become warm. They are fed by hand out of a small
vessel, which should contain as much milk as it is known each can drink.
They are first taught to drink out of the vessel with the fingers, like
a calf, and as soon as they can hold a finger steady in the mouth, a
small tin tube, about three inches in length, and of the thickness of a
goose-quill, should be covered with several folds of linen, sewed
tightly on, to use as a substitute for a teat, by means of which they
will drink their allowance of milk with great ease and quickness. A
goose-quill would answer the same purpose, were it not easily squeezed
together by the mouth. When the same person feeds the lambs--and this
should be the dairy-maid--they soon become attached to her, and desire
to follow her everywhere; but to prevent their bleating, and to make
them contented, an apron or a piece of cloth, hung on a stake or bush in
the inclosure, will keep them together.
It is much better for the lambs and for their dams that they be _weaned_
from three and a half to four months old. When taken away, they should
be put for several days in a field distant from the ewes, that they may
not hear each other's bleatings, as the lambs, when in hearing of their
dams, continue restless much longer, and make constant and, frequently,
successful efforts to crawl through the fences which separate them. One
or two tame old ewes are turned into the field with them, to teach them
to come at the call, find salt when thrown to them, and eat out of
troughs when winter approaches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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