WHEAT C I ill UK. 281 



and the knives cannot cul cleanly against it. It is also important that the 

 knife wheel should be set firmly, so that when cut tin- the blades remain. 

 close against the face plate. 



Sometimes the wheel becomes loose, and when the knives are being set 

 they are apparently right, but when the machine is put in operation the 

 wheel springs away from the face plate. Whether the knife wheel is loose or 

 not, can be ascertained by pushing against the wheel away from the face 

 plate, and if it is found not to be tight, it can be adjusted by means of the 

 set-screws. 



One point attaches to the bagging — second-class bags at once makes 

 second-class chaff. Good chaff should be presented in a manner that will 

 commend itself to the buyer, and an inferior or dirty bag does not produce a. 

 favourable preliminary impression. 



Attention to all the above points in cutting will enable a farmer to pro- 

 duce a very fair sample of chaff even from an inferior, " flaggy " hay. The 

 object in dealing with hay of this kind must be to prevent the flag being 

 broken into dust, and to give the chaff a good appearance — and that can only 

 be achieved by care and attention to every detail in the machining. 



Feeding Value. 



Apart altogether from appearance, however, there is one feature in chaff 

 production that has yet to be appreciated by both grower and buyer — that 

 is, it may vary much in feeding value. It is a quality that cannot be 

 detected in the final product, but it is nevertheless a fact. The feeding 

 value of chaff depends largely on the class of soil on which it is grown, a 

 rich soil generally producing a chaff of high feeding value. At Coonamble 

 Experiment Farm it was observed that chaff from hay grown on the- 

 rich, black soil required to have very little grain added to make it a suffi- 

 cient ration for horses. Chaff produced on good soils has not always such 

 an attractive appearance as that which comes from the lighter soils, but if 

 the feeding qualities were better understood the former would be appreciated 

 more highly. To convince the Sydney market that this is so will take time, 

 no doubt, but meantime the farmer who has a strong soil can console him- 

 self that he can feed his horses well with less grain that if he were located 

 on lighter land. 



HARVESTING WHEAT FOR GRAIN. 



For harvesting grain crops the reaper and binder, the stripper, the com- 

 bined harvester, and the reaper thresher have been used successively. 



In moist districts the reaper and binder is used exclusively, for in such* 

 districts the grain in the standing crop is rarely hard and dry enough to be- 

 taken off with a stripper. 



( )ver the greater portion of our wheat area the conditions are, however, 

 favourable for harvesting with the combined harvester or some of its later 

 developments. 



Considerable controversy has waged about the advantages and disadvan- 

 tages of harvesting with the respective implements. As cheap and rapid- 

 means of garnering the Grain, the harvester and reaper-thresher are unexcel- 

 led; but advocates of the reaper and binder point to the fact that the straw, 

 or at least portion of it. is wasted, and that what is saved is of lessened value- 

 This is unquestionably true, but the fact must not be lost sight of that, 

 after all, straw is a very inferior feeding material. The cost of saving it 

 is in most cases greater than its actual value in normal seasons, and 



