The Grasses, Fresh and Cured. 191 



for feeding horses especially, also for sheep and cattle. The sor- 

 ghum plant may be successfully used for silage. 



277. The cereals as forage plants. — Wheat, oats, barley and 

 rye plants may serve for pasture and hay production in many 

 cases ^^-ith profit. These grasses, for such they are, may be sown 

 at almost any time during the growing season, and will soon cover 

 the ground with a cai-pet of green, affording much nutritious 

 pasture, where otherwise nothing of value would be produced. 



Eye sown in August will furnish pasture, three or four weeks 

 later, that will continue useful until winter sets in, and is again 

 available as soon as vegetation starts in the spring. Stewart* 

 states that fifty sheep may be continuously pastured in summer 

 upon six acres of land sown to rye the previous fall, if, in addi- 

 tion to the pasture, they are fed a little linseed meal and corn. 



Green rye, when used for soiling or pasturing cows, has the 

 reputation of imparting a bad flavor to milk. This trouble can 

 usually be averted by turning the cows to pasture, immediately 

 after milking, for two or three hours, after which time other feed 

 should be given. 



Barley furnishes an excellent pasture in a short time after 

 seeding, and yields liberally of green forage. Sown in fields 

 from which a grain crop has been harvested, barley will grow two 

 or three feet in height and may even head out before heavy fall 

 frosts. At the Alabama (Canebrake) Station^ a field seeded in 

 the fall with barley yielded 23,100 pounds of green forage by the 

 following March. Winter wheat can likewise be used for pasture 

 and yields a nutritious herbage suitable for soiling. In southern 

 Kansas winter wheat pastured by cows in mild weather is said to 

 impart a grass flavor to what otherwise would grade as winter 

 butter. 



278. Oats or barley and peas. — The value of oats and peas 

 and barley and peas for forage crops has been tested by Eoberts 

 and Clinton at the Cornell Station. » They write: ^'Banking 

 next to corn as a forage crop and a close second, comes oats and 

 peas. In the two years in which we have been conducting experi- 



* "Feeding Animals." 



* Bui. 9. 



=» Bui. 135. 



