Experience has amply demonstrated that--in the climate of the Northern
and Eastern States, where no grass grows from four to four and a half
months in the winter, and where, therefore, all that can be obtained
from the ground is the repeatedly frozen, unnutritious herbage left in
the fall--it is better to keep sheep confined in yards, excepting where
the ground is covered with snow. If suffered to roam over the fields at
other times, they get enough grass to take away their appetite for dry
hay, but not enough to sustain them; they fall away, and toward spring
they become weak, and a large proportion of them frequently perish.
Flocks of some size are here, of course, alluded to, and on properly
stocked farms. A few sheep would do better with a boundless range.
Some let out their sheep occasionally for a single day, during a thaw;
others keep them entirely from the ground until let out to grass in the
spring. The former course is preferable where the sheep ordinarily get
nothing but dry fodder. It affords a healthy laxative, and a single
day's grazing will not take off their appetite from more than one
succeeding dry feed. It is necessary, in the North, to keep sheep in the
yards until the feed has got a good start in the spring, or they will
get off from their feed--particularly the breeding ewes--and get weak at
the most critical time for them in the year.
Yards should be firm-bottomed, dry, and, in the northern climate, kept
well littered with straw. The yarding system is not practised to any
great extent in the South; nor should it be, where sheep can get their
living from the fields.