406 



Missouri Agricultural Report. 



Shropshire rams on rape ptisture, University of Missouri, June, 1912. 



cowpeas do not make a very good growth. On the station farm 

 here we find it a better practice to delay corn, planting a little and 

 sow the peas with the corn, either mixing them with the corn, 

 drilling the mixture, or, better still, using a special cowpea attach- 

 ment on the planter, checking the corn and dropping about four 

 peas to the hill of corn. The peas will bother some in, the cultiva- 

 tion, but their value makes up for the bother. Fifty to sixty-pound 

 western lambs are most commonly used to pasture off these peas. 

 They will put on about 14 to 15 pounds up to 20 pounds gain in 

 seventy-five to eighty days in the cornfields. During this time a 

 single-deck carload of sheep will eat about fifty bushels of com, 

 and, of course, most of the leaves they can reach. By the middle 

 to the last of November the lambs will need more feed than that 

 which they obtain in the fields. As the frosts soon kill the cow- 

 peas and the leaves all drop off, many farmers sell the lambs direct 

 from the cornfield, while others prefer to feed them grain and hay, 

 selling them later on in, the winter. Just which would be best to 

 do will always depend on the weight and amount of flesh the lambs 

 are carrying and the condition of the market. This system of 

 sheep feeding has become popular because of the low cost of pro- 

 duction. Gains are made almost entirely off of what would other- 

 wise go to waste, and a margin of one cent gives a fair profit in 

 many cases, and good interest on the investment has been made 

 on closer margins. The other sheep feeders buy in the fall and 

 keep the sheep from ninety to one hundred days longer, feeding 

 grain and hay, and in many cases, silage. But the uncertainty of 

 the market has kept many farmers from doing this, especially 

 since 1910, when feeder lambs were high and the "bottom dropped 



