Page:Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.djvu/627

Rh mutton is from the smaller breeds, which only scale from 9 to 15 lb. per quarter, and the legs only about 4½ lb.

Foreign Mutton.—New Zealand Mutton and Canterbury Lamb are now sold everywhere at prices much below English-grown meat. The freezing process to which the carcasses are subjected does not improve the quality of the meat, and there is a good deal more shrinkage in cooking. There is some prejudice among many people against it, which may be well-founded. It certainly is cheap, while the best qualities of English mutton maintain their price. The effect upon the price of second and third qualities of home-produced meat has been more pronounced.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON LAMBS.

The lambing season in this country commences with the new year. In all high-class flocks where rams are bred, and in all flocks where the production of fat lamb is a principal object, lambing must be early, and in some cases is well forward by Christmas. The natural disposition is, no doubt, for ewes to produce young in the spring, but in the artificial conditions in which domestic sheep are placed, some breeds will lamb as early as September and October. Among these, Dorset ewes are the best known, and are the source of the earliest lamb which supplies the London market. Lambs are wonderfully hardy, and upon the Wiltshire and Hampshire Downs are to be seen playing around the lambing pens in large numbers in January and February. For the first three weeks or so they require shelter from bitter winds and driving snow, and this is easily provided by thatched hurdles and ricks of straw or hay, conveniently placed to give the necessary "succour." This in fact constitutes the "lambing pen," which is a temporary erection of the nature indicated. It is often of large size and divided into straw-littered courts for the latest dropped and the stronger lambs, according to age. The twin lambs require more shelter and care than the robuster single lambs. When fat lambs are the object, the ewes are liberally supplied with oil-cake and corn, in order to stimulate the flow of milk, and at the earliest possible age the lambs are encouraged to feed out of small troughs upon finely-ground linseed cake and split peas or beans. They are also allowed to run forward through lamb creeps, in order to crop the turnip greens, early rye, and other succulent herbage. Everything is done to develop flesh, and at this stage lambs will increase in weight at the rate of 1 lb. per day. At ten or twelve weeks old such lambs will weigh of dressed carcass about 10 to 12 lb. per quarter. Hampshire Down lambs are well suited for the purpose of providing early lamb, but several other breeds may be successfully employed for the same purpose. On the south coast and in the Isle of Wight the raising of fat lambs is a special industry, and the ewes are timed to drop their