386 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



for fodder. The seed may be planted in any of the common 

 corn planters, or drills may be opened with a marker, and 

 the seed be sown by hand and be covered with a plow or a 

 Aving-toothed cultivator. The crop may be harvested for 

 silage, or be fed green. When used for silage it should be 

 placed in the silo in layers with corn. Two loads of corn to 

 one load of the soy beans makes a good mixture. Soy bean 

 silage, when preserved alone and fed separately, has been 

 known to cause a disagreealjle flavor in milk and butter ; but 

 when the mixture of two-thirds corn and one-third soy beans 

 has been fed in the form of silage, no bad results have been 

 noticed. Soy bean fodder may be fed green for three to 

 four weeks in September, providing frost does not injure it. 

 No bad flavors are known to occur in milk or butter from 

 the crop when fed in the green state. When used as a green 

 fodder, the feeding should commence as soon as the crop 

 begins to blossom, for the stems of the plants become woody 

 soon after seed develops. 



Poor success will often be had with this crop until the soil 

 becomes inoculated with the special bacteria which produce 

 the nodules on the roots of soy beans. This inoculation 

 may be accomplished by treating the seed with the pure cul- 

 tures now offered for sale l)y reliable dealers ; by getting 

 soil from an old soy bean field, where the nodules have been 

 abundant on the roots of the crop ; or by getting the dried 

 nodules from the roots of a crop, and saving them over until 

 another year. This last method may be carried out by pull- 

 ing a part of the crop where the nodules arc plentiful, and 

 when the fodder is well dried, shaking the dirt and nodules 

 adhering to the roots onto bran sacks, and then saving this 

 material over winter for use in treating the seed for another 

 crop. By mixing this dry material with the seed just before 

 it is planted, the crop will become inoculated quite early in 

 its growth, and more comi)let('ly so than where soil inoc- 

 ulation is practised. The most common method, however, 

 is to dig about 1,000 pounds of surface soil from an old soy 

 bean field, and use it broadcast on the new field, harrowing 

 it in before planting the seed, 



