for a week or more, to go through a curing process. The timothy 

 may be threshed directly from the shocks, or the heads may be 

 hauled to stacks or ricks. If these stacks are well covered with hay 

 or straw, the seed may be kept in them for months. 



After the seed crop has been harvested, the headed hay should be 

 mown as soon as possible, since the green leaves remaining on the 

 plants dry rapidly. 



Harvesting with Combines 



In recent years in localities where combined harvesters and 

 threshers have been used for cereal crops, these machines have also 

 been used to some extent for harvesting timothy seed. Since the 

 seed is threshed at the time it is harvested, it must be quite well 

 matured. The timothy stems may be cut off relatively high, just- 

 below the heads if desired, in much the same way as with a header. 



Time of Harvesting 



According to records collected by the United States Department 

 of Agriculture, the average date when the harvesting of timothy 

 seed begins in northern Missouri, which is about the southern limit 

 of the area of its production, is about July 21. As the season 

 advances, harvesting progresses northward. The average date when 

 the first seed is harvested in southern Minnesota is about August 5. 

 In any particular locality, most of the seed is harvested within a 

 week or 10 days after harvesting operations begin. 



The largest yields of seed are obtained if the crop is harvested 

 after most of the seed has matured but before much shattering has 

 occurred. At that time, seed may be shattering from the extreme 

 tips of 10 to 20 percent of the earliest heads although there will still 

 be some immature seed on small heads growing on short stems. If, 

 however, harvesting is delayed until these late heads mature, the 

 seed on the larger early heads begins to shatter, and the heads may ap- 

 pear like the one in the middle of figure 1, or may even lose enough 

 seed to appear like the two heads at the right of the illustration. 



Threshing the Seed 



Timothy must first become well dried before being stacked or 

 threshed, or the seed may be injured as a result of heating. The 

 threshing of timothy seed requires a considerable amount of skill 

 on the part of the man operating the machine. 



From studies made at the College of Agriculture, Edmonton, 

 Alberta, Canada, it was concluded that timothy seed can be com- 

 pletely and satisfactorily threshed if the speed of the cylinder does 

 not exceed 800 to 900 revolutions per minute and the teeth of the 

 concaves do not come into mesh with those of the cylinder more than 

 one-fourth of an inch. Under these conditions, hulls were removed 

 from only 11 percent of the seeds. When the speed of the cylinder 

 was 1,050 revolutions per minute, and the teeth of the concaves and 

 cylinder were in mesh 1.5 inches, the proportion of hull-less seeds 

 was increased to 31 percent. 



Timothy seed is much lighter in weight than the seed of cereals. 

 If there is a very strong current of air through the machine, a 



