66 RANGE IMPROVEMENT IN CENTRAL TEXAS. 
for his stock, both as a matter of business and as a matter of humanity. 
With a view to assisting stockmen of central Texas and farmers in 
their efforts in the direction indicated, the writer made a large number 
of tests in the station garden during 1900 to determine the value of 
oats and wheat for hay and green forage purposes. He secured many 
different varieties from the Department of Agriculture and from 
other sources, planted the seeds in drills, cultivated the ground thor- 
oughly, had the crop cut and cured when the seeds were in dough 
state, and baled the hay product. The results were in every way 
successful. The seasons were favorable; the yield in every case was 
considerable; the hay had a rich color, and in the bales presented an 
attractive appearance and kept as well as any other hay. During the 
following winter the bales were opened and fed to stock and every 
straw of it was greedily eaten. Mr. P. O. Forbus, foreman of the 
station working force, has grown during the last two or three years a 
turf oats which has not only afforded a good winter pasture for his 
stock, but has yielded fairly good grain crops later. He has not cut 
the crop for hay, but is satisfied, as the result of the station experi- 
ment of 1900, that in that shape the crop will be worth much more to 
him than as a grain crop. Mr. W. J. Warder, late a stockman and 
farmer of California, stiJl later of the Abilene country, and now at 
El Paso, Tex., is authority for the statement that several years ago 
in California, realizing that the drought coming on was likely to ruin 
his wheat crop, he had the entire field cut just after the heading. He 
handled the green product precisely as if it had been grass, had no 
difficulty in curing it,and sold the hay product for more than he could 
have realized for a good grain crop. Mr. C. W. Merchant, of 
Abilene, Tex., is making a specialty of cultivating both oats and wheat 
expressly for green winter forage and only incidentally with a view to 
grain crops. Central Texas stockmen and farmers are reasonably cer- 
tain, four out of every five years, to secure a good oats-hay crop, even 
if they shall fail to secure a good grain crop. A wheat crop for hay 
purposes is not quite so reliable, but is worth the annual effort, and 
the writer strongly recommends that such be made. 
Preanvts (Arachis hypogxa). 
As above suggested, reliable forage plants which can be converted 
into good hay are what is much needed by stockmen and farmers in 
central Texas counties. They are reasonably certain each year to have 
grass for their live stock from the time the earliest range grasses (as 
needle grass) begin to green out, well into the early winter. After 
the range grasses are frost-bitten, however, they are often troubled to 
procure winter feed for stock without having to pay ruinous prices. 
It will pay them to go into the work of experimenting in the direction 
indicated with a view to helping themselves out. They can supply 
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