PART II. 



VELVET BEANS VERSUS COTTONSEED 

 MEAL AS FEEDS FOR DAIRY CATTLE 



By 



Geo. S. Templeton 



AND 



H. C. Ferguson 



Introduction 



Due to the greatly increased production of velve.t 

 beans in recent years dairymen are becoming interest- 

 ed in the crop as a possible means of furnishing an eco- 

 nomical home grown concentrate. The bean crop is 

 nearly always planted with a crop of corn. With appar- 

 ently no injury to the corn crop they will yield from 

 one-half to one ton of beans to the acre, besides mak- 

 ing a heavy vine growth. Henry and Morrison in 

 "Feeds and Feeding," give them me following value 

 in digestible nutrients per one hundred pounds, com- 

 pared with corn and cottonseed meal : 



Protein Carbohydrates Fat 



Velvet bean, seed 18.1 50.8 5.3 



Velvet bean, seed and pod 14.9 51.7 3.8 



Good cottonseed meal 31.6 ' 25.6 7.8 



Dent Corn 7.5 67.8 4.6 



It will be seen from the above that velvet beans con- 

 tain more digestible carbohydrates and less protein 

 and fat than good cottonseed meal, but more pro- 

 tein and less carbohydrate.^, than dent corn, while the 

 hulled beans contain more fat and the unhulled beans 

 less fat than corn. With these facts in mind the fol- 

 lowing experiments were planned to determine their 

 actual feeding value for dairy cattle. 



EXPERIMENT A 



Objects of Experiment 



The objects of this experiment, made in the winter 

 of 1915-16, were to determine the relative value of vel- 

 vet beans and pods as compared with a mixture of 

 seven parts corn meal and eight parts cottonseed meal, 

 as influencing: 



1. The production of milk. 



2. The production of butterfat. 



3. The feed cost of milk and butterfat. 



