14 BULLETIN 110, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
blood. Nevertheless, the great majority of the animals contained 
some Aberdeen- Angus, Shorthorn, Hereford, Red Polled, or Devon 
blood. Some had a predominance of Jersey blood, and some few 
carried no admixture of any kind of improved blood. They varied 
from 2 to 4 years in age, the majority being 2 years old when they 
were purchased in the fall. As will be seen later, they were small. 
At the inauguration of the tests in April they ranged from 545 to 576 
pounds in weight. They were, however, in their lightest form, as 
they had no doubt lost on the average not less than 75 pounds each 
during the previous winter months. 
WINTERING THE STEERS. 
Previous work has shown that it does not pay to feed such steers 
so as to produce marked gains in live weight, unless the object is to 
finish them for the market very early in the summer season. For- 
tunately the Cobb farm is unusually well supplied with rough and 
cheap feeds, and these are the kind that should be largely depended 
upon for getting mature steers through the winter months. Large 
areas of old corn and cotton fields were available. Between the rows 
there is always reasonably good growth of crab grass, which is really 
an exceedingly valuable cheap feed and affords no little grazing. 
Along the fences and ditches also was a considerable growth of native 
.grasses, which had fallen down and dried after the first two or three 
frosts, but nevertheless afforded some grazing. During an average 
winter there are one or two native plants, such as wild vetch or Au- 
gusta vetch and melilotus, which come up in February and furnish 
some grazing until the appearance of the usual summer grasses. Of 
course, steers handled in this way during the cold months lose very 
materially in weight; in fact, during severe winters the losses by 
death may be quite heavy. 
SUMMER PASTURE AND PASTURE LANDS. 
The summer pastures used in these experiments consisted of a 
mixture of sweet clover (melilotus), Japan clover (lespedeza), 
Johnson grass, crab grass, and some Bermuda grass. The melilotus 
seed had been planted, but the other plants were purely voluntary. 
As a rule melilotus becomes available for light grazing by March 15, 
while the Japan clover and Bermuda grass seldom afford good grazing 
before May 15. 
The pasture was divided into fields for the purpose of the experi- 
mental work, the size of each one depending upon the number of 
cattle grazed upon it, and also upon whether the steers were to be 
fed a light or a heavy ration, or no supplementary feed at all. The 
object was to have an abundance of pasture for each lot of cattle so 
the results obtained would be comparable. 
