188 FIELD CROPS 



shade, are better nurse crops. Oats start growth early in 

 the season, and on account of their dense growth are a 

 fairly good crop to clear the land of weeds. Barley is rather 

 better, however, since it matures earlier in the season, and is 

 cut before many of the weeds have matured their seeds. If 

 oats are used as a nurse crop, an early variety should be sown, 

 and it should be seeded thinly. 



230. Sowing with Other Grains. A rather common 

 practice among some farmers, particularly in Canada and 

 in some of the Northern states, is to sow oats with some other 

 small grain crop, as barley or wheat. In Canada, the most 

 common combination is oats and barley. Experiments 

 show that larger yields of grain in total pounds are produced 

 from a combination which is about half barley and half oats 

 than from either alone. In order to have the two grains 

 mature at the same time, a rather late barley and a medium 

 early oat are necessary. In Minnesota and some other 

 states, wheat and oats are often grown together. While the 

 oats and barley grown in mixtures in Canada are usually 

 fed together on the farm or sold as feed, on account of the 

 difficulty of separating the two grains, mixtures of wheat and 

 oats are frequently taken to elevators to be separated, the 

 oats being then returned to the farm and the wheat sold. It 

 is doubtful whether the increased yield from this combina- 

 tion is sufficient to pay for the expense of separation, but 

 where all the grain is fed on the farm, the growing together 

 of varieties of barley and oats which ripen at the same time 

 often increases the profits from these crops. 



THE USES OF OATS 



231. Feeding to Stock. By far the greater part of the 

 oat crop is fed to live stock, principally to horses. Oats 

 have long been regarded as the best grain feed for horses, 

 and while corn has rather largely replaced them for this pur- 

 pose in recent years on account of its larger yield and rela- 



