R. J. H. De Loach
Published: 2015-08-06
Total Pages: 72
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Excerpt from Progressive Sheep Raising The sheep, as a domesticated animal, is closely bound with the great movements of world commerce during the past hundred years. The history of sheep raising reflects the remarkably rapid development of commerce and industry during the nineteenth century, in which the founders of the packing industry took part. Less than a century ago mutton was little used outside the densely populated districts Type of Sheep of the Old World. In the Americas, Africa, Australia and Central Asia - remote regions where transportation was poor and land was cheap and sparsely populated - there was no market for mutton and sheep were raised for skins and fleeces only. For the production of these, the Merino was the ideal type, and it had the field all to itself. Up to as late as 1870 four-fifths of all the sheep in America were either pure-bred or grade Merinos. During the following twenty years, however, several developments of world-wide significance took place which changed the aspect of the worlds sheep-raising industry. Railroad building and steamboat operation, along with the practical application of large-scale refrigeration and the refrigerator Wool annihilated time and distance between the sheep ranges and the centers of world meat consumption so that the sheep grower for the first time found himself face to face with the strong and steady pull of a world demand for mutton as well as wool and skins. Sheep growers began crossing their wool-growing type of sheep with the various mutton types of Europe. Not until 1869 was the first through-line How railroad opened up between Chicago and New York, so that cars of western meats or other goods could be shipped through to eastern markets without reloading. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.