The flockmaster's companion and shepherd's guide : containing the particulars and description of the different breeds of sheep, with their treatment during lambing and other seasons of the year, valuable recipes for the cure of their different diseases, and best method of management

Preface To This Edition

In sending out a Third Edition of “ The Flockmaster’s Companion,” the publisher desires to express his thanks for the patronage bestowed on previous [editions of the work. The corrections and improvements in the ensuing work are numerous, which will be evident to those who compare the editions. The work is a valuable pocket companion to all who interest themselves in that useful and valuable animal, the Sheep.

Preface To The First Edition

The following Practical Work having been presented to the publisher by a Practical Shepherd, and it having been read and sanctioned by several Flockmasters and Agriculturists, he is induced to publish it, believing that the Practical Knowledge it will impart to the Shepherd and Flockmaster, as to the management of that important part of Stock, will be of more value than a hundred times the price of the work.

The value of Sheep appears to have been appreciated, and consequently the cultivation and management of them studied, ever since the first formation of man, as will appear by Ancient Scriptural History, Gen. iv. 4. Ever since that time we find that various attempts have been made with success to improve their breed, which serves to prove that they are to the Farmer a most valuable part of his Stock. This we need not doubt, when we consider in the first place, the manure they produce to the land ; the value of their fleece and skins ; the provision their flesh makes for the family ; the value of them, and also of their lambs, to the Farmer at market, is of no small importance. Formerly, butter and cheese were made of their milk, though now obsolete ; these, with other valuable properties, pertain to the sheep, and all produced comparatively at little expense, as the food collected in the field would be, were they not to be led over it, worth but little, the sheep biting closer than the ox ; he was destined to live where the other would starve ; he was designed in many places to follow the other, and to gather sufficient nourishment where the ox would be unable to crop a single blade. Two purposes are answered by this: all the nutriment that the land produces is gathered from it, and the pasture is made to produce more herbage than by any other means it could be forced to do, as the sheep by his close bite not only loosens the roots of the grass, and disposes them to spread, but by cutting off the short suckers and sproutings — a wise provision of nature — causes the plant to throw out fresh, more numerous, and stronger ones, and thus improves and increases the value of the crop. Nothing will more expeditiously or effectually make a thick permanent pasture than its being occasionally and closely eaten down by sheep.

The reader may probably notice the plain and common expressions used in the following work ; but as it emanated from the pen of a Practical Shepherd, such plainness will probably be most readily excused, and when it is considered that the work is intended for plain and practical persons, it will most likely be more acceptable on that account.

Contents

Introduction 13

Usual Names... 14

Age by the Teeth 14