Vernon Bailey, chief field naturalist of the Biological Survey, writing from Seguin, Tex., under date of November 8, 1904, says:
No sheep are kept in tins part of Texas, and in talking with several intelligent farmers I find that the reason invariably given is the abundance of coyotes. The region is occupied by small farms, mainly 80 to 500 acres, on which cotton, corn, sorghum, and vegetables are the principal crops. There are few if any large stock ranches, but each farm has its pastures for horses and cattle. These pastures are the wild land covered with scattered mosquito, post oak, and patches of chaparral and cactus. The native grasses are abundant and of excellent quality, and in this mild climate furnish good feed throughout the year. Many of the pastures are not half eaten down, and the dead and dry vegetation becomes a nuisance. After harvest cattle and horses are usually turned into cotton and grain fields, where they do good work in cleaning up grass and weeds in the field and along the borders. Still there is abundance of feed constantly going to waste, and a small flock of sheep could be kept with great profit and no expense on almost every farm.
Fifty to two hundred sheep on a farm would at once make this part of Texas the most important woolgrowing section of the State. Other advantages to be gained would be keeping down the cactus and chaparral, which are inclined to spread and occupy much of the ground, keeping the edges of pastures and fields cleaned up so that they would not harbor a host of predaceous insects and rodents in close proximity to growing crops, and furnishing to the farmers and small towns a supply of fresh meat other than chicken. In this warm climate beef is rarely available, except in the larger towns. The advantages of introducing sheep into this part of the country are acknowledged by the farmers, and there seems to be no reason why it has not been done, except that coyotes are common, large, and fond of mutton.
Similar conditions prevail in many parts of the West and over large areas. While a dozen years ago the low price of wool was an important factor in causing farmers to abandon sheep raising, in recent years the prices have been excellent. Fine washed wool was quoted in the New York market February 6, 1905, at 32.35 cents per pound and in St. Louis on the same date at 40.41 cents per pound. The price of tub-washed wool at St. Louis was at no time during 1904 less than 30 cents per pound. Unwashed wool ranged from 15 to 31 cents during most of the year. Yet the number of sheep in the United States is now decreasing. Montana, with an area of 146,000 square miles, leads the States in the number of sheep kept, which is 5,638,957.[E] England, with an area of 50,867 square miles, has about five times as many as Montana. In Montana sheep are herded in immense flocks; in England every landowner and farmer keeps a small flock.
[E] Crop Reporter, U. S. Dept. Agric. February, 1905.
It is evident that the discouraging condition of the sheep industry in the United States is not due to a lack of favorable climate nor to the absence of suitable pasturage. Neither is it due to low prices of wool and mutton. Indeed, in our markets mutton is coming to be more and more in favor, and this growing demand may be one of the causes for the present drain upon the flocks and the decrease in their numbers; but the chief discouragement of the industry undoubtedly lies in the depredations of worthless dogs and coyotes.
The dog question is a serious one, especially in thickly settled parts of the country, but the evil is best remedied by a resort to taxation. The tax on dogs should be sufficiently high to put most of the worthless ones out of existence.
The coyote problem is a serious one. Various methods of dealing with it have been in vogue since coyotes first began to like mutton. None of the methods have been entirely satisfactory, and some are signal failures. All of them combined have resulted in a partial check on the increase of coyotes in most parts of their range. Poison has probably killed the greatest number of adult animals, and in some parts of Mexico has almost destroyed some of the species, but no such success has attended its use in the United States.