The Bossier banner., 1892-08-18
FARMER AND PLANTER.
PEAS FOR MILcH COWS.

The Value of Peas and Pea Meal as Dairy
Feed.
For several months we have suggested
to our dairymen the use of peas and pea
meal, or a trial of them, but we may
not have given these matters the i'm
portance they deserved, because of a
doubt whether they would be proftably
grown as cattle feed in the states, and
whether the reports given were not in
tended to act as boom for foreign
grown product to the injury of the
trade In the cotton-seed meal, that is
by product, and was for many years a
waste in the southern states. But the
evidence brought forward at the meet
ing of the Wisconsin dairymen's COM
vention would place peas as one of the
crops that our northern farmers may
grow as feed for milch cows, and per-
haps for other animals, with security
of profit when fed upon the farm where
they are grown.
One speaker before the convention
said he put his peas in four inches deep,
using two and one-half bushels of seed
to the acre of the small Canada pea.
the ground at the rate of one bushel of
seed to the acre. He grew about 100
bushels of the mixed grain per acre,
and had the crop ground and fed with
bran, and about forty pounds of corn
insilage per. day. He never obtained as
much butter from his COWS as he did
that year.
Another speaker had cut the oats and
peas before ripening and cured them
as hay. The results were excellent,
and the expense of threshing and
grinding were saved, as also the
value of the oat and pea straw.
The first speaker said the flow of
milk kept up better, though it might
not have been largely increased at any
time. The chairman said he found two
pounds of pea meal equal to six pounds
of bran, and the crop of the first speak
er of thirty-three bushels per acre was
equal to 4,5O0 pounds of bran.
Another speaker sowed two and one
half bushels of peas to the acre, and
then plowed them in, four or five
inches deep. Senator Palmer, of Michi-
gan, was reported as growing ten to
fifteen acres of peas, oats and barley
mixed, and by cutting when in the
dough obtained a crop which proved
profitable feed after being put into the
silo. Another speaker sowed one bushel
of peas and one of barley and oats.
He was pleased with the result. His
yield was thirty-five to forty bushels of
the mixed grain per. acre. Another said
that in feeding pea meal mixed with
oats and bran he obtained eighty-four
pounds of butter from six two-year-old
heifers in two weeks, or one pound a
day from each.
The chairman cautioned them against
using too rich ground, as it would pro-
duce too many vines and not enough of
peas. Two of those who spoke named
ffty-fve to sixty bushels of peas or the
mixed grain per acre as common crops
in some counties, and 100 bushels per
acre as among the possibilities.
One farmer had grown fifty bushels
of peas to the acre with oats,
and proposed to increase his acreage
next year, as the family thought the
cream was better than usual while he
fed the pea meal, and even when he
fed the pea straw, or hay, as it should
be called if cut while green.
The chairman gave simple rule for
growing peas for stock feeding. The
ground must be good average soil, and
the peas must be sown as early as it is
possible to work the land. Three
bushels of seed of the larger varieties
and two and one-half or three bushels
of the small Canada peas to the acre
gave good results. Many farmers do
not put on seed enough, or plant them
deep enough.
All those, remarks the American Cul
tivator, who spoke seem to be impressed
with the value of the pea meal, or the
green or dried fodder, as a cattle feed.
but there was some difference of opin-
ion in regard to the sowing with oats
and barley, or with oats alone, as also
in regard to cutting the crop green for
the silo, or allowing it to ripen and then
threshing it, and grinding the mixed
grain. The larger number seemed to
favor the latter method, perhaps, be
cause more had used it in that way, but
the advocates of the ensilage method
were very confident of its value used in
that way. New England farmers and
dairymen should test the value in both
ways.-Southern Cultivator.