CHAPTER IV.
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.
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.
