SOY BEANS AS A SUPPLEMENTARY SILAGE CROP 



Edward R. Minns 



Soy beans have never been grown on many farms in New York. There 

 are comparatively few locaHties in the State where the crop will grow well 

 enough to compete with the commercial crops of these beans grown in 

 the warmer latitudes of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. There 

 are limited areas in New York where some of the earlier varieties of soy 

 beans will mature 15 to 20 bushels of seed on an acre. Larger and some- 

 what later varieties can be grown to sufficient maturity for ensiling or soil- 

 ing purposes. There is little opportunity to cure the plants for hay in 

 September, the season when they are most valuable for feed. The most 

 profitable use that can be made of the soy bean in this State is to ensile 

 it with corn fodder before frost kills the foliage. For this purpose the 

 culture of soy beans should be encouraged wherever the tendency is 

 toward intensive dairy farming and the soil and climate are favorable for 

 corn growing. It is the purpose of this bulletin to point out the reasons 

 why soy beans are a good crop to supplement corn fodder in the silo, and 

 how they have been successfully grown for this purpose by practical 

 farmers in different parts of New York. 



FEEDING VALUE OF SOY BEANS 



As a forage crop, soy beans have been found very rich in protein. The 

 seeds alone, when ground into meal, can be successfully substituted for 

 equal amounts of linseed meal in feeding dairy cows.* Soy bean hay is 

 shown by analysis to have a high percentage of protein and fat. At the 

 Massachusetts Hatch Station, a comparison of the amounts of protein, 

 fat, and carbohydrates produced on an acre each of soy beans and flint 

 corn cut for green fodder, showed that the soy bean acre produced nearly 

 34 per cent more of protein than did the acre of corn; while the acre of 

 corn produced over 84 per cent more of carbohydrates and fat than did 

 the acre of soy beans. Ensilage made from corn alone is known to be a 

 wide ration, and needs to be supplemented with foods richer than itself 

 in protein in order to balance the ration. The Massachusetts test indi- 

 cates how this may be done where both the corn and the soy beans can 

 be grown to a reasonable degree of maturity and combined when filling 

 the silo. It is not to be inferred that a mixture of the two crops will make 



♦Bulletin 168, Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station. 



259 



