INDIANA CANE GROWERS. 475 



BY-PRODUCTS OF SORGHUM. 



BY A. CHAPMAN. 



Time, practical experience, and scientific research have proven that these once 

 despised by-products are of the most vital importance to the sorghum industry. 

 By by-products we mean the blades, the seed, the scum from the evaporator, and 

 the bagasse, or crushed cane. 



First, we consider the blades as fodder, for which they surpass corn in fattening 

 qualities, which no farmer in the present age would think of allowing to go to 

 waste. We even remember, when but a little boy, in the wilds of Illinois, assisting 

 our father to carefully gather the corn blades, with which we covered our pump- 

 kins kept in the pumpkin- house, constructed of cornstalks with the blades on. As 

 the pumpkins were fed to the stock during winter, the fodder was fed also. True, 

 the labor of gathering the sorghum blades is considerable, and care has to be taken 

 in curing them ; but there is an old proverb particularly adapted to the farm, that 

 " Waste makes want." It is not what we make, but what we save, that constitutes 

 our bank balance at the close of the year. 



The second and most important by-product of sorghum is the seed, much of 

 which is now left to rot in the field. The seed, next to the saccharine productions, 

 is the most valuable product of the plant. Prof. Wiley, in his valuable and com- 

 prehensive report on sorghum, which we feel justified in quoting as the most re- 

 liable authority obtainable, says: "The sorghum plant is a true cereal. The 

 seeds have starch, albuminoids, oil, sugar, and fiber in such proportions as render 

 them suitable for animal food." He says further : " In the one item of seed alone, 

 the sorghum cane possesses a by-product more valuable than the by-products of all 

 other sugar-producing plants combined." He gives the average yield of wheat at 

 720 pounds per acre, corn at 1 ,456 pounds, and sorghum at 1,250 pounds — nearly 

 as much as corn, and nearly double the yield of wheat; and yet this is but a by- 

 product, and one that many of our farmers have cast away as worthless. In food 

 value the seeds, when properly fed, are nearly equal to corn, and for some kinds of 

 stock superior to oats. Mr. Henry Porter, a Jefiereon county farmer and a pioneer 

 sorghum grower, recently informed us that since harvesting his cane he has fed 

 his hogs nothing but cane seed and the skimmings from his evaporator. He has 

 some of the finest porkers in the neighborhood, many of them tipping the beam 

 at 350 pounds and upward. He will feed cane seed all the winter, considering it 

 little inferior to corn for stock of all kinds. His hogs are doing better on the seed 

 than his neighbors' hogs on corn. For chickens there is nothing better than cane 

 seed. When fed to horses and cows, especially those confined and having little or 

 no exercise, the seed should be boiled or steamed, and to cows should be fed with 

 some good wholesome slop — skimmings from the evaporator are good — as the hard, 



