SHEEP-GRAZING IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.
In the last year I have received a good many letters from persons desirous
to try sheep-farming in California, and this has led me to look a little
closely into this business as it is conducted in the northern parts of
California.
There is no doubt that the climate of California gives some exceptional
advantages to the sheep-grazer. He need not, in most parts of the State,
make any provision against winter. He has no need for barns or expensive
sheds, or for a store of hay or roots. His sheep live out-of-doors all
the year round, and it results that those who have been so fortunate as
to secure cheaply extensive ranges have made a great deal of money, even
though they conducted the business very carelessly.
It ought to be understood, however, by persons who think of beginning with
sheep here, that the business has changed considerably in character within
two or three years. Land, in the first place, has very greatly risen in
price; large ranges are no longer easily or cheaply obtained, and in the
coast counties of Southern California particularly large tracts are now
too high-priced, considering the quality of the land and its ability to
carry sheep, for prudent men to buy.
Moreover, Southern California has some serious disadvantages for
sheep-grazing which the northern part of the State--the Sacramento Valley
and the adjoining coast-range and Sierra foot-hills--are without, and
which begin to tell strongly, now that the wool of this State begins to
go upon its merits, and is no longer bought simply as "California wool,"
regardless of its quality. Southern California has a troublesome burr,
which is not found north of Sacramento, except on the lower lands. In
Southern California it is often difficult to tide the sheep over the fall
months in good order, whereas in the northern part of the State they
have a greater variety of land, and do this more easily. The average of
southern wool brings less by five or six cents per pound than that of the
Sacramento Valley; and this is due in part to the soil and climate, and in
part to the fact that sheep are more carefully kept in the northern part
of the State.
Many of the sheep farmers in the Sacramento Valley have entirely done away
with the mischievous practice of corraling their sheep--confining them
at night, I mean, in narrow, crowded quarters--a practice which makes and
keeps the sheep scabby. They very generally fence their lands, and thus
are able to save their pasture and to manage it much more advantageously.
They seem to me more careful about overstocking than sheep farmers
generally are in the southern part of the State, though it should be
understood that such men as Colonel Hollester, Colonel Diblee, Dr. Flint,
and a few others in the South, who, like these, have exceptionally fine
ranges, keep always the best sheep in the best manner. But smaller tracks,
sown to alfalfa, are found to pay in the valleys where the land can be
irrigated.
In Australia and New Zealand sheep inspectors are appointed, who have
the duty to examine flocks and force the isolation of scabby sheep; and
a careless flock-master who should be discovered driving scabby sheep
through the country would be heavily fined; here the law says nothing
on this head, but I have found this spring several sheep owners in the
Sacramento Valley who assured me that they had eradicated scab so entirely
from their flocks that they dealt also by isolation with such few single
specimens as they found to have this disease.
Moreover, I find that the best sheep farmers aim to keep, not the largest
flocks, but the best sheep. There is no doubt that the sheep deteriorates
in this State unless it is carefully and constantly bred up. "We must
bring in the finest bucks from Australia, or the East, or our own State,"
said one very successful sheep farmer to me; "and we must do this all the
time, else our flocks will go back." "It is more profitable to keep fewer
sheep of the best kind than more not quite so good. It is more profitable
to keep a few sheep always in good condition than many with a period of
semi-starvation for them in the fall," said another; and added, "I would
rather, if I were to begin over again, spend my money on a breed worth six
dollars a head, than one worth two or three dollars, and I would rather
not keep sheep at all than not fence." He had his land--about twenty-five
thousand acres--fenced off in lots of from four to six thousand acres, and
into one of these he turned from six to eight thousand sheep, leaving them
to graze as they pleased. He had noticed, he told me, that whereas the
sheep under the usual corral system feed the greater part of the day, no
matter how hot the sun, his sheep in these large pastures were lying down
from nine in the morning to four or five in the afternoon; and he often
found them feeding far into the night, and rising again to graze long
before daylight. They were at liberty to follow their own pleasure, having
water always at hand. An abundant supply of water he thought of great
importance.
[Illustration: INDIAN SWEAT-HOUSE.]
Of course, where the sheep are turned out into fenced land no shepherds
are required, which makes an important saving. One man, with a horse,
visits the different flocks, and can look after ten or fifteen thousand
head.
The farmer whom I have quoted does not dip his sheep to prevent or cure
scab, but mops the sore place, when he discovers a scabby sheep, with a
sponge dipped into the scab-mixture.
He gets, he told me, from his flock of ten thousand merinoes, an average
of seven pounds per head of wool, and he does not shear any except the
lambs, in the fall. It is a common but bad practice here to shear all
sheep twice a year; and where, as is too often the case, a flock is very
scabby, no doubt this is necessary.
He had long sheds as shelter for his ewes about lambing-time, so as to
protect them against fierce winds and cold rain storms; and he saved every
year about two hundred tons of hay, cut from the wild pastures, to feed
in case the rain should hold off uncommonly late. His aim was to keep the
sheep always in good condition, so that there should never be any weak
place in the wool. His sheds cost him about one dollar per running foot.
The sheep found their own way to them.
I find it is the habit of the forehanded sheep-grazers in the Sacramento
Valley to own a range in the foot-hills and another on the bottom-lands.
During the summer the sheep are kept in the bottoms, which are then dry
and full of rich grasses; in the fall and winter they are taken to the
uplands, and there they lamb, and are shorn. Where the range lies too far
away from any river, they drive the sheep in May into the mountains, where
they have green grass all summer; and about Red Bluff I saw a curious
sight--cattle and horses wandering, singly or in small groups, of their
own motion, to the mountains, and actually crossing the Sacramento without
driving; and I was told that in the fall they would return, each to its
master's rancho. I am satisfied that, except, perhaps, for the region
north of Redding, where the winters are cold and the summers have rain and
green grass, and where long-wooled sheep will do well, the merino is the
sheep for this State; and "the finer the better," say the best sheep men.
Near Red Bluff I saw some fine Cotswolds, and in the coast valleys north
of San Francisco these and Leicesters, I am told, do well.
A great deal of the land which is now used for sheep will, in the next
five, or at most ten years, be plowed and cropped. There is a tendency to
tax all land at its real value; and, except with good management, it will
not pay to keep sheep on land fit for grain and taxed as grain land, which
a great deal of the grazing land is. As the State becomes more populous,
the flocks will become smaller, and the wool will improve in quality at
the same time.
I have seen a good deal of alfalfa in the Sacramento Valley, but I have
seen also that the sheep men do not trust to it entirely. They believe
that it will be better for sheep as hay than as green food; and this
lucerne grows so rankly, and has, unless it is frequently cut, so much
woody stalk, that I believe this also. It makes extremely nice hay.
Every man who comes to California to farm ought to keep some sheep; and he
can keep them more easily and cheaply here than anywhere in the East.
For persons who want to begin sheep-raising on a large scale and with
capital the opportunities are not so good here now; but there are yet fine
chances in Nevada, in the valley of the Humboldt, where already thousands
of head of cattle, and at least one hundred thousand sheep, are now fed by
persons who do not own the land at all. I am told extensive tracts could
be bought there at really low prices, and with such credit on much of it
as would enable a man with capital enough to stock his tract to pay for
the land out of the proceeds of the sheep. The white sage in the Humboldt
Valley is very nutritious, and there is also in the subsidiary valleys
bunch-grass and other nutritious food for stock. Not a few young men have
gone into this Humboldt country with a few hundreds of sheep, and are now
wealthy. The winters are somewhat longer than in California, but the sheep
find feed all the year round; and they are shorn near the line of the
railroad, so that there is no costly transportation of the wool. Mutton
sheep, too, are driven to the railroad to be sent to market, and for
stock, therefore, this otherwise out-of-the-way region is very convenient.
Riding through the foot-hills near Rocklin--where I had been visiting
a well-kept sheep-farm--I saw a curious and unexpected sight. There are
still a few wretched Digger Indians in this part of California; and what I
saw was a party of these engaged in catching grasshoppers, which they boil
and eat. They dig a number of funnel-shaped holes, wide at the top, and
eighteen inches deep, on a cleared space, and then, with rags and brush,
drive the grasshoppers toward these holes, forming for that purpose a
wide circle. It is slow work, but they seem to delight in it; and their
excitement was great as they neared the circle of holes and the insects
began to hop and fall into them. At last there was a close and rapid
rally, and half a dozen bushels of grasshoppers were driven into the
holes; whereupon hats, aprons, bags, and rags were stuffed in to prevent
the multitudes from dispersing; and then began the work of picking them
out by handfuls, crushing them roughly in the hand to keep them quiet,
and crowding them into the bags in which they were to be carried to their
rancheria.
"Sweet--all same pudding," cried an old woman to me, as I stood looking
on. It is not a good year for grasshoppers this year; nothing like the
year of which an inhabitant of Roseville spoke to me later in the day,
when he said, "they ate up every bit of his garden-truck, and then sat on
the fence and asked him for a chew of tobacco."
The sheep ranges of the northern interior counties are less broken up than
in the coast counties farther south; and it is better and more profitable,
in my judgment, to pay five dollars per acre for grazing lands in the
Sacramento Valley than two dollars and a half for grazing lands farther
south and among the mountains. The grazier in the northern counties has
two advantages over his southern competitor: first, in the ability to buy
low-lying lands on the river, where he can graze from three to six or even
ten sheep to the acre during the summer months, and where he may plant
large tracts in alfalfa; and, secondly, in a safe refuge against drought
in the mountain meadows of the Sierras, and in the little valleys and
fertile hill-slopes of the Coast Range, where there is much unsurveyed
Government land, to which hundreds of thousands of sheep and cattle are
annually driven by the graziers of the plain, who thus save their own
pastures, and are able to carry a much larger number of sheep than they
otherwise would.
Moreover, nearness to the railroad is an important advantage for the
sheep-farmer; and I found that the most enterprising and intelligent sheep
men in the northern counties send their wool direct by railroad to the
Eastern States, instead of shipping it to San Francisco to be sold.
Finally, much of the land now obtainable for grazing in the Sacramento
Valley, at prices in some cases not too dear for grazing purposes, is of
a quality which will make it valuable agricultural land as soon as the
valley begins to fill up; and thus, aside from the profit from the sheep,
the owner may safely reckon upon a large increase in the value of his
land. This can not be said of much of the grazing land of the southern
coast counties, which is mountainous and broken, and fit only for grazing.
Of course I speak here of the average lands only. There are large tracts
or ranchos in the southern coast counties, such as the Lampoe rancho
of Hollester & Diblee, and lands in the Salinas Valley, which are
exceptionally fine, and to which what I have said of the coast panchos
generally does not apply.
[Illustration: ANOTHER COAST-VIEW, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.]