"Sheep farming" : a treatise on sheep, their management and diseases / by W. Sutherland.

Sutherland, William, active 1878.

Date:: 1892

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: "Sheep farming" : a treatise on sheep, their management and diseases / by W. Sutherland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

11/240

• • crossing and re-crossing existing varieties, still more pro- fitable wool and mutton producers. In these modern days matters are in a vastly different position from what they were fifty, ay even twenty, years ago. Improved and rapid communication has of late years made “ all the world our neighbours,” and the effects of foreign competition have been severely felt by the British farmer. Stock breeders and feeders have not suffered so severely as those engaged in other branches of agriculture, and the interests of the flockmaster have not even been affected to the same extent as those engaged in cattle rearing and feeling, prime mutton having suffered less from foreign competition than any of the other agricultural commodities. If all tales are true, however, the competition from abroad, so far as the mutton trade is concerned, seems likely to prove much more severe in the near future than it has done in the past; it therefore behoves the sheepowner to look pointedly into every detail of his business, and, while not running rashly or hastily into “newfangled” methods of management, to be not too firmly glued to the old routine, but ready to give a fair trial to every scheme which, on being looked at from a common-sense stand-point, seems likely to result to his benefit. One should be “ever learning,” and many a useful “ wrinkle ” can at times be picked up in very unexpected quarters by one possessing the gift of an observant eye. Trifles mount up— A little ill-judged parsimony here, A little unnecessary expenditure there, A little thoughtless neglect elsewhere. Such items, when put together, form a very hurtful whole, and breeders and feeders alike should do “ their level best ” to avoid them.