22, FORAGE CROPS 
duction of manure, due to feeding the extra hay. 
In these improved rotations, the same number of 
grain crops are secured, besides a crop of hay in 
the first year and two crops in the second year. 
When wheat and corn are the main crops, as in 
Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa, the rotation may 
be improved, also, by seeding cowpeas or soy- 
beans after the wheat is removed. After the hay 
is harvested, rye may be seeded, which covers the 
land in winter; it may be plowed down as a green 
crop for corn, and wheat be seeded after the corn. 
Hopkins, of the Hlinois Experiment Station, sug- 
gests a four-year rotation of corn, wheat, corn and 
clover, including the cowpea or soybean as a catch- 
crop for hay, the legumes to be fed as hay or pas- 
ture, and the manure returned to the land. Ora 
five-year rotation may be used in which timothy is 
seeded with clover, and the land pastured the fifth 
year. These rotations greatly increase the possi- 
bilities of the land for hay-growing, while at the 
same time they prevent rapid exhaustion. These 
suggestions may undoubtedly be adopted with profit 
throughout the other corn-growing and wheat- 
growing states of the central Mississippi valley. 
In the southern states, there has been a short- 
age of hay crops, because the tendency has been 
to grow cotton and tobacco continuously, or with 
only infrequent rotation when corn and cotton are 
raised. The advantages of the introduction of the 
