SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VIII. 815 



seed at the same time. That's killing three birds with one stone. I 

 will admit that after harrowing your grain your field will look bad. It 

 will look as though it had lost its last friend, and you will probably 

 curse Kelly for advising you to try such a plan, but just you wait a 

 few days, and see that grain field get right down and hump itself and 

 grow. If it does not do this, if I were you, I would never buy a Ram- 

 bouillet ram of Kelly. 



My reason for sowing ten acres with the grain is this, that acreage 

 will make a rapid growth and furnish an abundance of feed, even if 

 the late summer should prove to be very dry, but I would not care to 

 risk sowing the whole field then, because if the season should prove 

 favorable for the growth of rape it might make such a strong growth 

 that it would be nearly as high as the grain and bother like everything 

 at stacking time. 



I remember once, some years ago, I sowed some rape with oats, and 

 I was obliged to go over the field and knock down every shock so the 

 wind and sun might dry out the rape that was in the butts of the bun- 

 dles, but that oat straw with the dried rape in it was, next to the alfalfa 

 hay, the finest sheep fodder I ever fed. 



The rape seed sown in May will usually be from four to eight inches 

 high at harvest time. The sickle will sometimes snip off a few leaves, 

 but not enough to make any difference with stacking the grain, and 

 unless the season bs very dry will make a rapid growth after the grain 

 is cut, and by the time stacking is done will be one solid mass of green, 

 the finest sheep pasture in the world. My friends, your sheep will feed 

 upon this in preference to the earlier sown rape, but will attack that 

 later in the season. With this pasture you need have no fear of stunt- 

 ing your lambs, but they will swell and grow and your heart will be 

 glad at sight of them. 



In first turning m the sheep in the rape you will need to be careful, 

 but there is not so much danger of bloat as is generally supposed. Before 

 turning in I would fill them on some kind of food they will relish. They 

 must not be turned in the rape when they are hungry. I would leave 

 them in the rape an hour or an hour and a half the first day. I would 

 follow the same course tlie second and third days, only the third, day 

 I would let down the bars, and I would not put them up again the 

 entire fall. I would give them free access to the rape field all day, and 

 all night, too, for that matter, if the wolves or dogs do not bother. I 

 have not lost but one sheep by bloat since following this plan. 



I believe there could be a large profit made by the farmers of 

 eastern South Dakota by sowing their entire grain fields to rape in this 

 manner, then go out on the range west of the Missouri and buy a car 

 load or two of lambs, according to the rape you may have. I would buy 

 in August, let them feed on the rape in the stubble the entire fall, then 

 as a supplement I would have a few acres of raps sown in the cornfield, 

 fence those acres of rape from the rest of corn, turn in the lambs and 



