22 FORAGE CROPS 



duction of manure, due to feeding the extra hay. 

 In these improved rotations, the same number of 

 grain crops are secured, besides a crop of hay in 

 the first year and two crops in the second year. 



When wheat and corn are the main crops, as in 

 Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa, the rotation may 

 be improved, also, by seeding cowpeas or soy- 

 beans after the wheat is removed. After the hay 

 is harvested, rye may be seeded, wiiich covers the 

 land in winter; it may be plowed down as a green 

 crop for corn, and wheat be seeded after the corn. 

 Hopkins, of the Illinois Experiment Station, sug- 

 gests a four-year rotation of corn, wheat, corn and 

 clover, including the cowpea or soybean as a catch- 

 crop for hay, the legumes to be fed as hay or pas- 

 ture, and the manure returned to the land. Or a 

 five-year rotation may be used in which timothy is 

 seeded with clover, and the land pastured the fifth 

 year. These rotations greatly increase the possi- 

 bilities of the land for hay-growing, while at the 

 same time they prevent rapid exhaustion. These 

 suggestions may undoubtedly be adopted with profit 

 throughout the other corn -growing and wheat- 

 growing states of the central Mississippi valley. 



In the southern states, there has been a short- 

 age of hay crops, because the tendency has been 

 to grow cotton and tobacco continuously, or with 

 only infrequent rotation when corn and cotton are 

 raised. The advantages of the introduction of the 



