PBOFITABLE SYSTEMS FOR FEEDING SHEEP 53 



of seed sown ahead of the last cultivation of the corn will 

 generally make a very satisfactory growth by the time the 

 corn is ready for the sheep in the fall. They will prefer to 

 eat out the rape before they start on the corn, but if started 

 on the rape slowly and taught to eat corn at the same time, 

 they will combine the two feeds for themselves in a very 

 satisfactory way. Rape or grass pasture is about the only 

 succulent roughness that is practical to furnish, and the 

 former ranks ahead of the latter. Ordinarily the rape does 

 not last as long as the corn, and consequently some other 

 roughness must be fed later. 



An Iowa farmer, speaking of rape as a roughness for 

 cornfield feeding, says: "About the middle of September, 

 1904, I turned fifteen hundred sheep, nine hundred year- 

 lings, three hundred wethers, and three hundred ewes into 

 a cornfield that had a very fine stand of rape in it. In one 

 hundred days these sheep were fat and ready for market, 

 and I found that they had consumed only one bushel of 

 corn per head. This is the most corn that I ever saved 

 with a rape crop. Without the rape a hundred days' feed 

 for yearlings and wethers generally requires about three 

 bushels of corn per head and from one hundred to two 

 hundred pounds of hay." 



Fall blue grass and corn an excellent combination. A 

 blue-grass pasture or a clover and timothy meadow is 

 the most common supplement used to furnish the rough- 

 ness for cornfield feeding. If the grass has not been eaten 

 down during the spring and summer, and if the fall growth 

 is very good, then such a pasture will furnish sufficient and 

 very satisfactory roughness. In fact, no piece of grass on 

 the farm will pay better than one that is pastured by sheep 

 in conjunction with a cornfield. Regarding the amount of 



