BULLETIN No. 87x>. 15 * 
( The soja bean is one of onr most promising crops. Soja bean 
silage has been fed in our stable long enough to give assurance of 
its value. For milch cows it has seemed to arrest the natural 
decline, in yield fora time, when fed after along period on corn 
silage. This may have been partly due to other causes, as changes 
in grain fed, and approach of spring. Fed to a bull of a little under 
1,000 pounds weight for over five weeks, at the rate of 45 pounds 
per day, 44 8 pounds were consumed, and the bull made a slow but 
steady gain in weight. 
The high percentage of protein in proportion to carbohydrates 
gives this silage a narrow nutritive ratio, and this indicates that it 
can be used to good advantage as part of a ration of hay or straw 
with corn, or corn and oats, or mixed with corn silage. Indeed, we 
have a correspondent who is growing corn and soja beans together 
for silage, and who assures us that this combination saves him much 
grain, as less is needed with his stock when feeding this combination 
than with other coarse foods. 
A ration of 40 pounds corn and soy bean silage in equal parts by 
weight as good as digested in this and Experiment 5 has been cal¬ 
culated to yield digestible nutrients in pounds as follows: protein, 
.768 ; fats, 418 ; other carbohydrates, 4.622. The nutritive ratio is 
1 to 7.4, and although the nutritive substance is but 5.81 pounds, 
less than two-thirds of the standard for oxen at rest, it is, in all 
probability, sufficient to sustain a 1,000-pound animal and produce 
slow gain. This is possible because the animal will take little or 
no water not in the silage, and having, therefore, less internal 
work to perform, the small amount of nutritive substance suffices 
for the animal's needs.* 
5. DIGESTION OF CORN SILAGE 
By Brindle Cow. 
Date of Experiment, January and February, 1892. 
Ration fed, silage ad libitum. 
Total period, 17 days, which included three or four days recover¬ 
ing from exclusive cotton-seed diet. 
Feces collected last 6 days. 
Samples were taken every two days of collection period, taking 
about four pounds each time. These samples were dried, mixed 
and ground for analysis. This silage was from the College farm, 
where the yield per acre was light. 
Analytical and Other Data for Obtaining the Coefficients of Diges¬ 
tibility. See following Tables IX and X. 
* For further explanation of sustenance on small ration see Armsby’s Manual 
of Cattle Feeding, pp. 881-2. „ 
