1905-] SHEEP. 47 



time on to the loth of July. About the 20th of June is right. 

 That gives you all the spring to harrow your ground and get all 

 the weeds killed. You should fit the land for rape, as well as 

 you would for cabbages. Of course, rape is of the same 

 family. It must be rich land, and your rape will enormously 

 exhaust your land. But rape, if you properly handle your crop, 

 will help, in a measure, to refertilize the land. Rape is usually 

 fed on the ground. It can only be fed to good advantage on the 

 ground, so that your sheep will enrich the ground again, and 

 they will not trample it to injure it any. They work from 

 the side and take the ground clean as they go. Many news- 

 papers and many writers on the subject say you must exercise 

 great care for fear of their eating too much. I do not think 

 that is true, unless we depend on rape for part of the year and 

 then deprive the flock of it for a few days and then turn them 

 in. Possibly they may overeat under such circumstances, but 

 I think if we turn them in in the natural way, after the grass 

 begins to grow better in the fall, they will then go at it very 

 lightly. I have never known sheep to eat too much under 

 those circumstances. I presume later in the season, if you 

 were to take your sheep away and deprive them of it for two or 

 three days, and then turn them in, they would hurt themselves. 

 Another thing: always keep a box of salt in the field where 

 your rape is. Do that in the summer and in the fall, and I 

 think it is a good plan. 



Now, as. to the cultivation of rape, it matters little how you 

 cultivate it, whether broadcast or in drills, but unless you have 

 cleaned your land free and clear of weeds it is better to sow it 

 in drills, and then cultivate with a horse when the fourth leaf 

 comes out. I often sow it broadcast. A very little seed is as 

 good as more. A pound to an acre is as good as twenty 

 pounds. Twenty pounds does no more. A pound to the acre, 

 if you had a man who would sow it fine, would be just as good 

 as a larger quantity. The crop should be ready for the sheep 

 in the fall, when the fall feed gives out. There is no feed, 

 artificial or otherwise, with which you can make such good 

 mutton, in a given length of time, as you can on rape alone. I 

 feel perfectly satisfied of that, although some of my friends 

 dispute it, but I have tried it and I feel quite sure that is correct. 

 Furthermore, I feel perfectly satisfied that there is no mixture 

 of grain that will make such good mutton, in a given length 



