Yield.
The yield of seed is usually twelve to twenty bush els. In Massachusetts and Wisconsin and on lime stone soil in Kentucky and Alabama, yields of more than thirty-four bushels per acre have been secured. At the Kansas Experiment Station, the average for twelve years was twelve bushels of soybeans as compared with 31.6 bushels of corn and 43.8 bushels of kafir, the soybeans, however, affording the largest amount of protein per acre. On poor soils in the Gulf states, yielding twenty bushels of corn or less per acre, the yield of soybeans will ordinarily equal or exceed that of shelled corn. The usual yield of hay is one and one-half to three tons per acre, and of green forage or silage six to ten tons per acre. In both Connecticut and Massachu setts, the weight of soybean silage has been about two-thirds that of corn silage from the same area.
Uses.
As a feed.—The soybean is valued as a grain or seed crop for domestic animals, as a crop for the silo, for hay, and in Asia as a food for mankind. The seeds constitute the richest natural vegetable food known, being nearly equal to cottonseed meal. They have been fed with entire satisfaction to milch cows, steers, calves, hogs, sheep, horses and poultry. They should not be fed alone, but mixed with four or five times their weight of corn, kafir, or other starchy foods, thus taking the place of cottonseed meal, linseed meal and gluten meal. When fed to milch cows, the production of milk and butter has been entirely satisfactory and the flavor of these products faultless. The butter from soybeans is somewhat softer than that from cottonseed meal. For cattle and homes it is advisable to grind the seed, but this is unnecessary for hogs and poultry. For hogs, threshing is unnecessary, the entire ma ture plants being fed on tight floors. If the beans begin to shatter in the field before it is practicable to harvest the crop, hogs can be turned in to con sume them. The seeds thus shed remain sound on the surface of the ground for several months, or much longer than cowpeas. In a number of experi
ments at the Kansas Experiment Station, a mix ture of a small proportion of soybeans in the food for hogs resulted in a saving of about 30 per cent in the total food required to produce a given amount of growth.
The soybean is a very useful crop for soiling, a succession of plantings affording green food throughout July and August.
As silage.—The use of the soybean as silage gen erally has been satisfactory, especially when mixed in the silo with twice its weight of corn silage. When placed alone in the silo, there have been in stances of a strong objectionable silage which imparted a disagreeable flavor to milk and butter, even though the silage itself was sound. In Michi gan, 13,500 pounds of green soybean plants, placed in the silo in September, had shrunk by the latter part of the next April to 11,285 pounds. When one part of soybeans s mixed in the silo with two e um, t ,e average proton content of the so silage is increased from 2 per cent with to about 2.7 per cent for the mixed a rroorator. — Like the other legumes tubereb s. the soybean plant assimilates the of the soil air, and thus may improve the ns wen cost ..nt of the land. For this purpose, the large varieties are ra, et satisfactory. When the entire growth is plowed under or pastured, the in cr,ase in the succeeding crop of wheat or oats has be,n very large at the Alabama Experiment Station, while the plowing under of the stubble alone has increased to a moderate extent the oiell of the suc cee ling crop. The analyses on record seem to indi cate that soybeans usually contain more nitrogen to the acre than a crop of cowpeas, but that the stubble of an acre of soybeans contains a smaller amount of nitrogen than the stubble of cowpeas. This is doubtless due to the thinner planting of soybeans, to the smaller number of leaves dropped an I to the smaller number of branches that escape the harvesting machine.