188 



Missouri Agricultural Report. 



FEEDING ON RAPE AS A PREPARATION FOR WINTER FATTENING. 



Rape has been somewhat extensively used at this Station and 

 throughout the State for the fall pasturage of sheep intended for 

 winter fattening. It has rapidly grown in favor, since it produces 

 a large amount of forage to the acre, and the efficiency of this ma- 

 terial for fattening sheep and the ease with which it may be grown, 

 all commend it to the practical sheep man. It may be used as a 

 catch crop after oats and peas, which have been cut for hay, or 

 even after an ordinary hay crop. As a rule, lambs may be pastured 

 on rape from September 15th to November 15th at the rate of 

 fifteen or twenty lambs per acre, and they should gain in this time 

 twenty pounds each. 



The experiments with rape at this Station have indicated that 

 rape-fed lambs were in much better condition at the beginning of 

 winter than those pastured on grass. This fact has led us to con- 

 sider whether more profitable grains might not be made by lambs 

 in poorer condition at the beginning of the fattening period. To 

 test this matter an average lot of lambs was selected from the flock 

 and placed upon a second growth timothy and blue grass meadows, 

 for comparison with the main flock, which had been turned on rape. 

 The rape-fed lambs gained much more rapidly from the first than 

 those upon the meadow and at the time of placing in the barns for 

 the winter's experiments, ten of the rape-fed lambs weighed 851 

 pounds, while the same number of pasture-fed lambs weighed only 

 799 pounds. The following table illustrates the main points of 

 difference between the two lots from the beginning of the winter 

 period of fattening to its close : 



TABLE 7. 

 RAPE AS A PREPARATION FOR WINTER FEEDING. 



The grass-fed lambs (lot 27) ate rather more grain and hay, 

 drank more water, made somewhat larger gains and required a 

 larger amount of dry matter for each pound of gain than the rape- 



