FATTENING STEERS ON VELVET BEANS 3 
Air-dry Early Speckled and Osceola beans grown near McNeill, 
Miss. (fig. 3), yielded the following percentages of beans and hulls, 
by weight : 
Beans, Hulls, 
per cent per cent 
Early Speckled 73. 6 26. 4 
Osceola 57.8 42.2 
Since more beans are often produced than can be used advanta- 
geously as pasture, they are picked and stored for hand feeding or 
for sale. As no definite feeding value had been established and there 
was no standard market price as compared with a feed such as cotton- 
seed meal, the market price varied greatly in different sections, 
according to the local opinion of their feeding value. The beans in 
storage became dry and hard and the question naturally arose as to 
whether it would pay to grind or soak them before feeding to cattle. 
Fig. 3.— Early Speckled velvet beans (above) and Osceola velvet beans (below). Osceolas have 
about 50 per cent more hulls. Reduced to 59 per cent natural size 
While milling companies and many practical feeders favored grinding 
and some favored soaking, most feeders used the beans in the pods 
whole and dry. In order to determine definitely the difference 
between and the advantages of the various methods, if any, and to 
study other factors in fattening steers on velvet beans, a series of 
experiments was started by the Animal Husbandry Division, Bureau 
of Animal Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, in 1918 and 
carried on as follows: 
The work at the animal husbandry farm at Beltsville, Md., in 
1918 and 1919 was done independently under the supervision of 
Frank W. Farley. The work in 1918 at Collins, Miss., was done on 
the farm of H. M. Mcintosh. The work in 1920, 1921, and 1922 at 
McNeill, Miss., was done on a farm owned by the Mississippi Agri- 
cultural Experiment Station and operated by the Animal Husband rv 
Division. All the work in Mississippi was carried on in cooperation 
