14 BULLETIN 110, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



blood. Nevertheless, the great majority of the animals contained 

 some Aberdeen- Angus, Shorthorn, Hereford, Red Polled, or Devon 

 blood. Some had a predominance of Jersey blood, and some few 

 carried no admixture of any kind of improved blood. They varied 

 from 2 to 4 years in age, the majority being 2 years old when they 

 were purchased in the fall. As will be seen later, they were small. 

 At the inauguration of the tests in April they ranged from 545 to 576 

 pounds in weight. They were, however, in their lightest form,. as 

 they had no doubt lost on the average not less than 75 pounds each 

 during the previous winter months. 



WINTERING THE STEERS. 



Previous work has shown that it does not pay to feed such steers 

 so as to produce marked gains in live weight, unless the object is to 

 finish them for the market very early in the summer season. For- 

 tunately the Cobb farm is unusually well supplied with rough and 

 cheap feeds, and these are the kind that should be largely depended 

 upon for getting mature steers through the winter months. Large 

 areas of old corn and cotton fields were available. Between the rows 

 there is always reasonably good growth of crab grass, which is really 

 an exceedingly valuable cheap feed and affords no little grazing. 

 Along the fences and ditches also was a considerable growth of native 

 grasses, which had fallen down and dried after the first two or three 

 frosts, but nevertheless afforded some grazing. During an average 

 winter there are one or two native plants, such as wild vetch or Au- 

 gusta vetch and melilotus, which come up in February and furnish 

 some grazing until the appearance of the usual summer grasses. Of 

 course, steers handled in this way during the cold months lose very 

 materially in weight; in fact, during severe winters the losses by 

 death may be quite heavy. 



SUMMER PASTURE AND PASTURE LANDS. 



The summer pastures used in these experiments consisted of a 

 mixture of sweet clover (melilotus), Japan clover (lespedeza), 

 Johnson grass, crab grass, and some Bermuda grass. The melilotus 

 seed had been planted, but the other plants were purely voluntary. 

 As a rule melilotus becomes available for light grazing by March 15, 

 while the Japan clover and Bermuda grass seldom afford good grazing 

 before May 15. 



The pasture was divided into fields for the purpose of the experi- 

 mental work, the size of each one depending upon the number of 

 cattle grazed upon it, and also upon whether the steers were to be 

 fed a light or a heavy ration, or no supplementary feed at all. The 

 object was to have an abundance of pasture for each lot of cattle so 

 the results obtained would be comparable. 



