The Questio]!C Box. 309 



drilling in the oats the same day, at the ordinary depths. Both 

 crops came up at the same time. 



Mr. Cook. — We sow from a bushel and a peck to a bushel and 

 a half of peas, and pretty nearly two bushels of oats, per acre, 

 and it will be best to mix in a little barley in the last sowing. 

 We make three sowings of oats and peas each season, at intervals 

 of a week or ten days. The barley is mixed with the last one. 



Give comparative feeding value of oats and peas. 



Dr. Smead. — Oats have a nutritive ratio of one to seven, bran, 

 one to three five-tenths. Their value would depend on the coarse 

 food one had to feed. If he had a large quantity of straw or 

 timothy hay, more protein should be fed. The best single food 

 for a horse is oats; but if a horse is being worked hard and twelve 

 quarts of oats and two of wheat bran are fed, — I don't care what 

 the coarse foods are. 



Are oats and peas as good as clover, and are they good to seed after? 



Dr. Smead. — Clover fills a place in American agriculture that 

 no other plant can. I hope therefore that what I am saying 

 concerning oats and peas will not cause them to sow 

 less clover; but as a succulent food to have to feed all 

 animals during periods of summer drouth, oats and peas fill a 

 place that clover cannot; also in seasons like that of 1899, when 

 it becomes a matter of necessity for the New York State farmer 

 to raise something for dry fodder, to carry his live stock through 

 the winter, the oats and peas fill the bill in my experience better 

 than anything else. They can be sowm as soon as the frost is 

 out of the ground in the spring, and as late in my section of the 

 State as June 20th, and with even as dry a season as 1899 a fair 

 crop of oats and pea bay can be made, providing the ground is 

 made fairly rich and well tilled. I have cut as many as four tons 

 of cured hay per acre, and never less than one, and that was last 

 year when the extreme drouth made the yield short. As a grain 

 crop for feeding, when sowm one-fourth peas (always the small 

 white Canada variety) and three-fourths oats, a feeding grain is 

 produced w-hich when ground is almost ideal for milk j)roduction, 

 both in cows and ewes suckling lambs. For horses the peas in 



