Staunton Spectator

AGRICULTURAL—SCIENTIFIC
FROM THE SOUTHERN PLANTER.

AMERICAN METROPOLITAN SHEEP HUSBANDRY.

Sheep breeding must now be considered a leading branch of American husbandry. There may be found at the present day high bred Merino flocks in New York, Vermont and Pennsylvania, excelling by far the Spanish mother breeds originally imported from the sunny plains of Estremadura and Valencia. Our monthly 'Wool Growers Register' bears ample witness of the superior management of some choice Saxony flocks in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. The prairie States are rapidly filling up with improved stock from the East. The South is waking up to its true interest. Colonel Randell's letters have produced a wonderful change in public opinion, and all for the better in those regions. There is perhaps, no country in the world more favorable for the raising of grade sheep than the highlands of Texas and New Mexico. In fact, wool growing is on the ascent and will continue so for years to come in spite of all the political or financial changes that may occur from time to time in the administrative policy of the country. It has been frequently proved through the columns of this periodical that the demand for wool exceeds the production not only in this country but in all parts of the civilized world. But we may stretch our point to a larger extent, when we contend that the United States are designed by nature, and finally must be the great, and principal wool producing country, for the Eastern and Western Continents. Various circumstances coincide to corroborate such an assumption. It is a well known fact that Germany, the largest wool growing country in Europe, producing hardly any other kinds of wool than the high and middle grades of Saxony and Merino, or Electoral and Infantado wool, is mainly dependent on English, French and Belgian manufactures, for the consumption of that product.

Now, there are several causes which tend to place it almost beyond any reasonable doubt, that fine wool growing in the middle parts of Europe, must meet with a repulsive & retrograding check ere long. These causes are both of a physical and political nature. In regard to the first, we know that the breeding of fine sheep is mainly and entirely in the hands of the owners of the large landed estates, and that the small farmer is wholly excluded from any participation in that branch of husbandry. As the population of these countries is becoming more dense from year to year, natural pasture is growing scanty, as they are wanted for the necessary supply of breadstuffs. Artificial pasturing has to be resorted to, and for the last thirty or forty years has been the only support of these extensive flocks of fine sheep. But in spite of the rapid advancement agricultural science has made in recent times, the principal levers of this artificial system of feeding have proved to be entirely inadequate. Clover, which furnishes the main element of summer pasture, has become tired out in most places, and the potato rot, growing more pestiferous from year to year, is steadily depriving these sheep owners of the very power of maintaining the existence of their sheep during the winter.

It would lead us too far from our subject, to inquire into all the particulars of these well established facts. They are a matter of bitter complaint and great anxiety for the future with many a wool grower in those countries. But hard to overcome as these difficulties may be, the science of re-vigorating worn out lands, and manufacturing bountiful crops, has attained such an eminence in later times that there is hope left to remedy these evils.

The political danger awaiting the future destiny of fine wool growing in central Europe, is, however, of a far more dangerous character. No man, in the least acquainted with the present political state of Europe, will deny that they are deficient of every element of stability. But this revolution, or rather this general overthrow of matters, existing for the time, will be a deadly strife against the present distribution of real estate. That it will end in the destruction of all the privileges of the large land owners, and in the division of these large tracts into smaller lots for the benefit of the masses, there cannot be the least doubt. This will be the death blow to fine wool growing in the middle parts of Europe. There is but one country which may escape this general destruction—Russia, a country which presents many advantages to sheep breeding on an extensive scale. But its vast population is consuming nearly all it produces of the fine grades of wool, and the coarser kinds, which are mainly raised in the South, and mostly exported from the port of Odessa, where they find their way to the United States, are only fit for the manufacture of the most inferior kinds of woolen goods, and will never do any injury to our own production.

The next future and long years to come, present, therefore, a most cheering aspect to the cause of fine wool growing in this country, and will undoubtedly tend to the development of renewed exertion, and useful enterprise in this important branch of national industry.