10 
BULLETIN 1333, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
QUANTITIES OF FEED CONSUMED 
It was desired that the quantities of feed and digestible nutrients 
be kept as nearly equal as possible. However, with equal rations of 
silage, dry roughage, and protein, the quantities of dry matter 
were unequal because more velvet beans than cottonseed meal 
were required to supply a certain quantity of protein. Then the 
steers fed dry beans, whole and ground, would not eat beans enough 
to get as much protein as the cottonseed-meal lot. On the other 
hand, the steers fed soaked beans would eat beans enough but not 
silage enough to make their ration comparable with the cottonseed- 
meal lot. As a rule the steers cleaned up the silage first and left 
the beans. By feeding the beans first and the silage an hour later, 
when most of the beans had been eaten, it was possible to get the 
cattle to eat a little more of the beans. 
The cottonseed-meal lot ate considerably more silage than any of 
the other lots and also consumed a little more dry roughage. The 
Fig. 5.— Steers fed on whole dry velvet beans at the beginning of the experiment at Beltsville, Md., 
in 1918 
whole-bean lot and the ground-bean lot consumed practically equal 
quantities of silage and dry roughage, but the ground-bean lot would 
not eat nearly so much of the beans as the whole-bean lot. The 
soaked-bean lot ate considerably more beans than the other bean 
lots and consequently less silage. 
GAINS IN WEIGHT 
The cottonseed-meal lot made the greatest gains. Of the steers 
fed on velvet beans, the soaked-bean lot produced the largest gain, 
the dry-bean lot next, and the ground-bean lot the least. 
Throughout the experiment the steers gained in weight quite 
uniformly. Each lot made the greatest gain during the second 
period and the next larger gain in the third period. 
The steers as they appeared respectively at the beginning and 
at the end of the experiment are shown in Figures 5 and 6. 
HOGS FOLLOWING CATTLE 
Hogs, averaging 86 pounds at the beginning of the experiment, 
were kept in eacli pen. As no additional feed was <nven them and 
as they obtained very little corn from the silage, their gains were 
very small. In the dry velvet-bean and soaked velvet-bean lots 
