Harvesting and handling.
Owing to its great succulence it is impossible to cure the forage or biennial rape satisfactorily, and if it is in exceptional cases well cured it is not palatable and animals as a rule refuse to eat it. As a result, the forage rape is almost never cut for hay or for the silo, but is pastured or cut for soiling.
When rape is grown for seed it may either be cut with knives or be pulled. In either case it must be allowed to cure until thoroughly dry, after which it may be piled up in a barn or stack and threshed, at the convenience of the grower. If stacked outside, care should be taken to handle while damp enough to prevent shelling, and the stack should be covered with some rain-proof sub stance, such as marsh hay or boards.
Storage of seed.—After threshing, the seed should be stored in not too great bulk. Owing to the high oil content of the rape seeds they are liable to be come rancid and to heat to an extent to spoil the germinating power.
The storage of the seed after cleaning is very important. The seed should be put in piles, not over three inches deep unless perfectly dry. When in a perfectly dry condition, the seed may be piled a foot deep in summer, and two feet deep in winter, but must be stirred with a shovel frequently to drive off the moisture which is absorbed in damp weather. When seed is to be dried rapidly, it should be turned twice a day. In all cases the drying bins should be subjected to a good circulation of air.
Cleaning the seed.—Before rape seed can be used fur nil manufacture it must be thoroughly cleaned to remove all foul seeds and earthy material. In this cleaning process a six- or eight-sided cylinder is used, set on a slant of three-fourths to one inch to the running foot. This cylinder is composed of a tine screen for two-thirds its length and a coarser screen for the other one-third. The screen revolves at the rate of forty revolutions per minute, requires one-fourth horse-power to run it, and will clean sixty-four to seventy-two bushels of rape seed per hour. The whole apparatus is so set that a strong current of air carries away all dust. When the seed is very dirty the fall per running foot of the cylinder is diminished and the number of revolu tions per minute doubled.
Care must be taken in caring for the seed to prevent attacks of mold and must, and the occur rence of rancidity in the oil and rape cake or meal. This can be done by being careful not to pile seed in too deep piles and by proper precaution in refining.
Feeding.
The principal uses of forage rapes are for soiling and pasturage. In the former case the plants are cut with knives or a scythe, and fed to stock in desirable quantities. In the latter case the animals are turned in to harvest the crop for themselves, which, after they become accustomed to it, they do very thoroughly and with a great deal of satis faction. Rape resembles clover in its composition and should make a good grade of silage, but has not met with success as a silage crop. Whether fed as a soiling crop or pastured, it is a very palatable and valuable feed.
Rape has been shown to be a very valu able feed for fattening lambs and pigs, and has been fed even to dairy cows with sat isfactory re sults, although when so fed it should follow rather than immediately precede the milking period. If fed just before milking, the milk is likely to have the cabbage flavor, and will to a greater or less extent taint the butter.
It has also been found impossible to make good cheese from milk obtained from cows receiving rape as part of the ration, and it makes practically no difference whether the rape is fed before or after milking. (Bulletin No. 115, Wisconsin Ex periment Station.) When turning lambs on rape, it is well first to have their stomachs partially full of some drier food, as the great succulence of the rape plant is liable to cause hoven or bloat and often scours, with fatal results. Especially is this true when the rape is still wet from a rain or heavy dew. Swine are not thus affected and can be turned in at will. A good plan is to have the rape-field adjoining a blue-grass pasture in which the sheep can feed for a time before being turned into the rape. After sheep have be come accustomed to feeding on the rape they can be turned directly on it without harm.