U8E8 OF OATS 205 



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. 



247. 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, because of the diffi- 

 culty 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 if the increased yield from this combination 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 



248. 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 relatively lower price, 

 they are still in high favor among horsemen. For feeding to 



