36 Bulletin 827, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. 



fiber content and higher in fat. Cowpea is higher in crude-protein 

 content than alfalfa, lower in fiber, and higher in fat. Peanut hay 

 is not equal to these hays in crude-protein content, but is low in 

 fiber and high in fat. 



Sudan grass is frequently sown in mixtures with cowpeas or soy 

 beans for hay and facilitates the curing of the hay. At the McNeill 

 station, in Mississippi, Sudan grass, planted in drills 3 feet apart 

 about the middle of May, gave two cuttings totaling 4 tons of hay. 

 With the exception of lespedeza, which it exceeded in yield, it was 

 superior to any other hay tried at the station. (Detailed discussion 

 of Sudan grass may be found in Farmers' Bulletins 605, 1125, and 

 1126.) 



Sorghum is sown broadcast and cut for hay to some extent in the 

 section described. It is a good yielder, but the large, juicy stems 

 make it difficult to cure and it is more valuable and more easily 

 handled as a silage crop. (See Farmers' Bulletin 1158.) 



Grab grass, Mexican clover, and beggarwecd are volunteer crops 

 which are important for hay, as they cost nothing except to harvest. 



Crimson clover is grown to a limited extent as a hay crop. The 

 hay is of good quality and is relished by cattle. Other crops seem to 

 be better adapted as hay crops. 



Hairy or sand vetch is planted in the fall with oats or rye and 

 the crop is grazed during winter and early spring, yet it makes a 

 heavy yield of hay after the removal of the cattle. (See p. 29.) 



Cottonseed hulls is a commercial feed obtained as a by-product 

 of the manufacture of cottonseed oil. It has been extensively used 

 as a roughage and is about equal to corn silage, but is much more 

 expensive and is being replaced by cheaper home-grown roughages. 



The velvet bean (Farmers' Bulletins 962 and 1125). an annual 

 leguminous, twining vine, is now grown in the Piney Woods more 

 extensively than any other crop except corn, with which it is almost 

 always planted. The velvet bean was grown first in Florida and has 

 been cultivated extensively only in recent years. In 10 years, how- 

 ever, the acreage has grown from an insignificant figure to a point 

 where practically every acre of corn in the Piney Woods is now 

 planted to velvet beans, the most important forage and feed crop 

 grown there. 1 



At the present time cornstalk and velvet-bean pasture is the 

 principal winter-forage crop of the Piney Woods both for maintain- 

 ing cattle through the winter and for fattening them. The practice 

 of pasturing cattle on velvet-bean fields has become such an im- 

 portant factor in wintering cattle that most farmers provide no other 



1 Farm practices that increase crop yields in the Gulf-coast region are discussed in 

 Farmers' Bulletin 986. 



