126 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



average cost of a pound of gain was 4.82 cents with group one, and 7.12 cents 

 with group two. 20. The average net gain, allowing for care at 3 cents a 

 day, was $6.15 with group one and $3.62 with group two. The average net 

 gain, less care, was $8.98 with group one and $5.93 with group two. 



We have given these results here in full for the purpose of showing that 

 in other sections of the South, where the cow pea flourishes far better than 

 in the upland country of East Tennessee where these experiments were made, 

 farmers can produce an abundance of the finest of cattle food, and can, in 

 the feeding of beef cattle, make a larger profit than most of them are now 

 making with cotton; and can, at the same time, be growing a crop that will 

 improve their soil for the production of cotton and other crops. While we 

 appreciate the great value of commercial fertilizers as fully as anyone, we 

 cannot too often repeat that the feeding of stock lies at the beginning of all 

 rational farm improvement, either in the North or the South ; and the sooner 

 the Southern farmer learns the wonderful advantage he has in the cow pea the 

 sooner will permanent prosperity dawn upon him. If the feeding of native 

 cattle on the foods so easily produced in all parts of the cotton belt can be 

 made profitable in Tennessee, it can be made even more profitable in the soils 

 of the Atlantic border where the cow pea flourishes far better than in East 

 Tennessee. To one who has studied these things through long years of farm 

 experience it is amazing to note how slow the farmers are, not only in the 

 South, but throughout the wheat growing section of the Middle States, to 

 seize upon the means that will enable them to prosper as they have never 

 done. The experiments at the Tennessee Station simply corroborate those 

 made at the Delaware Station in feeding cow pea hay to milch cows as a 

 substitute for the bran the dairymen are continually buying. It was shown 

 there with cows, as it was with the beeves at the Tennessee Station, that 

 the protein needed in a ration can be more cheaply supplied by the cow pea 

 than by purchased food; for it was shown in Delaware that cows that had 

 been for a time fed on a ration in which the protein was furnished by the 

 bran, did not shrink in milk when taken from that to one in which cow pea 

 hay furnished the protein, but that when they were put back from the pea 

 vine hay to the bran again, there was a shrinkage in the milk yield. The 

 significance of these results to the wheat grower in the Southern and Middle 

 States is plain. It shows that while improving their soil through the grow- 

 ing of the pea, they can at the same time produce a food that will take the 

 place of costly purchased food, and will enable them to turn out the finished 

 products at a far less cost and consequently at a greater profit. The cotton 

 grower may imagine that he can do without stock, but the wheat grower who 

 does not keep and feed cattle is even more shortsighted than the cotton man. 



