St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1890-03-13
OATS FOR FEED.
The American Cultivator Thinks
More Value Should BE Given
Them,

the Am eP1Can CuEtlVaCOr InInkS
More Value Should Be Given
Them.
Oats are now very low in price. and
are better to buy than sell. In fact,
they are likely to be always an unprofit-
able crop for farmers who grow them
for sale. They require comparatively
little labor since the Introduction of
improved harvesting machinery. Their
main cost is the exhaustion of soil fer
tility, and there are very many parts
of the country where this is scarcely
considered matter Of much i'm
p0rtance. Throughout the West oats
are grown and sold at prices which
barely pay the cost of blowing, sowing,
harvesting and threshing the crop. If
the Eastern farmer could buy oats or
corn at the prices the Western farmer
is obliged to sell at, they could be
cheaper bought than grown on his own
land. With cheaper feed the land can
be fertiliZed and made to grow some
thing that pays better. This has been
done>to some extent with corn and oats.
By the time these grains reach the
Eastern farmer their cost has increased
by transpor tation so that compare
lively few farmers can afford to buy,
though still fewer can afford to grow
and sell.
This seems to be the situation with re-
gard to both oats and corn. 10 grow
them for home use, under ordinary cir
cumstances, is the prerequisite to hav-
ing them handily. A distance of even
few miles requires days work of man
and team to go and return with load.
Add this to the cost of transportation
hot hoe olraaIyr
and it becomes much too expensive for
the vast majority of farmers. If there
were branches of railroad rnnning to
every mans farm, it might be possible,
though even then the railroad, in ac-
cordance with the old rule of taxing
traffic all it will bear, would charge very
near the cost of team work. But the
necessity of keeping more stock of
Eastern farms has led to large pur-
chases of corn, oats and other feeds to
be fed out and made into stable manure.
Of late years farmers have learned that
by judiciOuS concentration of what
manure they can make on their corn
ground they can grow good corn cheaper
than they can buy IL and bring it to
their farms.
Oats are also the best grain with
which to balance the ordinary ensilage
ration, which must generally be made
of corn fodder. This is too carbonace-
and mineral elements. Cornmeal,
which is often given with ensilage. is
richer in carbon. but it is too much like
the composition of the enSilage to make
a proper ration for it. Farmers can buy
mill feed, or oil meal, or cotton seed
meal, but all these things must gener-
ally, if used, be bought and drawn to
the farm, and therefore will not Ordinar-
lily be used. Oats are the only first-class
supplemental ration to corn and meadow
hay What most Northern farmers can
produce.
But the strongest of all arguments for
growing oats is, that with this crop the
land can be seeded with clover. With
a dressing of phosphate and clover seed
at the same seeding there will usually
be good crop of grain and good catch.
Whether the land be heavy or light
good growth of clover penetrating the
subsoil with its roots produces an effect
equal to dressing of stable manure,
and at much less expense. Keeping the
stable manure for corn, and following
this next spring with oats fortified
with phosphate, and seeding with clover
is the best method of restoring fertility
to most rundown farms.
We believe the same fact holds true
as to oats. They are more easily grown
than corn, and are especially much
better adapted to those farmers whose
land is somewhat out of condition. With
alight dressing of phosphate good crops
of oats may be grown on land that would
not grow corn protitably, except with
much more expensive manuring.
1t is probably true that oats in prOpOr-
: ton to their bulk exhaust land more