252 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



slack. Flailing out cow-peas will cost about eight to ten cents 

 per bushel when the seed crop is good, and may cost as much as 

 twenty-five cents when the crop is poor. Cow-pea hullers are 

 manufactured and sold upon the market at prices ranging from 

 $300 to $600, exclusive of the engine. These hullers are re- 

 ported as doing satisfactory work, although none have been 

 tried at this Station. When enough cow-peas are raised in a 

 neighborhood to justify the purchase of a huller this is un- 

 doubtedly the most satisfactory method of thrashing, and when 

 peas are stacked or stored in the barn one machine should be 

 able to thrash 1,500 to 2,000 acres in a season. 



The common thrashing-machine is sometimes used for 

 thrashing cow-peas, but unless adjustments are made to adapt 

 it to thrashing cow-peas it will split more than half of the peas, 

 ruining them for seed. Different thrashing-machine companies 

 make attachments for the common grain-separator to adjust it 

 for thrashing peas and beans, but the trials of such attach- 

 ments at this Station have not proven successful; either the 

 cow-peas were not thrashed clean or else the seed was badly 

 broken. 



Our farm foreman, Mr. Floyd Howard, has made adjust- 

 ments to the bean-thrasher attachment for the Avery sepa- 

 rator so that we were able to thrash cow-peas this past season 

 fairly clean and with no more cracking of the peas than would 

 occur by flailing. Determinations of cracked peas of average 

 samples of the different varieties as they came from the sepa- 

 rator showed that the percentage of peas cracked ranged from 

 3 to 12 per cent. The varieties having the largest sized seed, 

 like the Gray Goose, were cracked the most, while the varieties 

 having smaller seed, like the New Era and Whippoorwill, were 

 cracked the least. 



The attachment adjusting the Avery separator for thrashing 

 cow-peas reduces the speed of the cylinder and at the same 

 time maintains the speed of the rest of the machine. To ac- 

 complish this the speed of the engine is reduced so as to turn 

 the cylinder at the rate of 500 revolutions per minute (the 



