398 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



engine and a self-feeding cutter with a twenty-eight-foot elevator to- 

 do the work. One man does the feeding and attends to the engine 

 (which requires almost no attention after once oiled and started), an- 

 other man works in the silo, a third runs the corn harvester, and the 

 other four with teams and low-down wagons do the hauling. The har- 

 vester we have used for the past five years in all kinds of corn with per- 

 fect satisfaction. The corn is bound and we do not have to cut the 

 bands as the machine will take care of it perfectly without. 



With this force we put up about forty tons on an average per day, 

 besides milking about fifty cows. In 1902 we filled a silo that holds one 

 hundred and twenty-five tons in two and one fourth days' running time, 

 and one holding one hundred and thirty-five tons in two and one half 

 days. AVe keep no more horses on the farms than v»'e would did; we puc 

 up no silage, and have to hire only two extra men for ten or elever. 

 days. In that length of time we harvest from thirty-five to forty-five 

 acres of corn, taking the entire crop from the ground and leaving the 

 ground ready for the plow. 



The cost may be figured in different ways. Were we to charge $3.00 

 per day for man and team and $7.00 for cutting machinery and fuel, 

 and $2.00 for the corn harvester, and $1.50 each for the men without 

 teams, it would stand thus: Five men w^ith teams. $15.00; two men 

 without teams. $3.00; cutting machinery, fuel, and harvester, $9.00. 

 Making a total of $27.00 for putting up forty tons of silage, or an aver- 

 age of sixty-seven and one half cents per ton. or about $6.7*5 per acre 

 one year with an other. 



But the extra expense over handling the crop in the old way !:-> 

 about $12.00 per day for about eleven days, with the result of four hun- 

 dred and twenty-five tons of silage at thirty-one cents per ton, or $3.1v 

 per acre for the two fifths of the crop that would be in the old way to 

 go to waste. A test at one of the experiment stations has shown that an 

 acre of average corn put through the silo will make as much beef as 

 $32.90 worth 'of feed fed in the usual way. Two fifths of this is $13.12. 

 making pretty good returns for an outlay of $3.10. 



Black Hawk County, Iowa. 



RAPE GROWN IN GRAIN FOR PASTURE. 



Prof. Thomas Shaic, in American Sheep Breeder. 



This method of growing rape pastures in the West is becoming very 

 popular, so much so that many farmers in grain-growing areas now sow 

 rape in nearly all the grain they grow. They then purchase lambs and 

 bring them from the West, or they gather them up where they can. and 

 make them ready for market on the grazing furnished by the rape. The 

 methods of sowing are various, and by many are not well understood. A 

 discussion of the question, therefore, should prove helpful to some at least. 



The rape plant can not by any means be grown thus with equal suc- 

 cess on all kinds of land. On stiff, hard clay it would make but little 



