Summary. 43 



or any similar stock feed, do not buy any having black seeds con- 

 tained therein . Black seeds are useless as feed, expensive as adulter- 

 ants, and dangerous in spreading weeds. 



Screenings vary widely in composition. Before buying send 

 samples to the seed laboratory for analysis. 



Feeding Screenings. — If the black seeds are not removed from 

 the screenings, it pays to screen them out. 



Screenings free from black seeds may be fed freely to all classes 

 of live stock. However, it is more profitable to have such screenings 

 compose not more than 50 to 60 per cent of the total grain ration. 

 Use such screenings as the basis, and add other coarse grains or meals 

 to make the grain ration suitable for the kind of stock being fed. 



If fed whole, screenings with black seeds removed may' be used 

 to best advantage for sheep and horses. For swine it pays to either 

 grind or soak for twenty-four hours to increase the digestibility. 

 For cattle they should be ground and mixed with other grains, which 

 mixture may be fed with cut roughage or separately as desired. 



If possible to screen out the flax and wild buckwheat these 

 are very valuable as the basis of a good home-made calf meal. With 

 the addition of oat and blood meals, such a pulverized mixture makes 

 an excellent milk substitute. 



There appears to be danger in feeding flaxseed screenings. 



Summary. 



The dockage set on the wheat, oats, barley, and flax received 

 at the terminal elevators at Fort William and Port Arthur for the 

 year ending August 31, 1913, amounted to over 100,000 tons. 



Transport charges on this quantity of material from the grain 

 fields of the west to the lake front are estimated at $650,000. 



The material removed from grain at terminal elevators consists 

 of shrunken and broken kernels of wheat, oats, barley and flax, besides 

 varying proportions of a very large number of weed seeds. 



Up to the present, most of the screenings from our terminal 

 elevators have been exported to the United States, where they have 

 been recleaned and used in various forms in feeding livestock. 



On account of the extremely small size of some, and the hard, 

 flinty seed-coats of others, the complete pulverization of all of the 

 weed seeds in screenings cannot be accomplished by an ordinary 

 chopper. Special machinery, expensive in itself and costly to operate, 

 is necessary for the proper grinding of the entire screenings. 



Screenings recleaned over a one-fourteenth inch perforated zinc 

 screen to remove the finer weed seeds (black seeds) may be satis- 

 factorily ground by ordinary choppers, if reasonable care is taken in 

 the separation and grinding. Recleaning in this way will remove 

 about 40 per cent from ordinary elevator screenings. 



Feeding stuffs manufactured from screenings, not properly 

 recleaned, sometimes contain thousands of vital noxious weed seeds 

 per pound. Such material should never be fed as it is liable to intro- 

 duce weeds that will entail the loss of thousands of dollars. 



