The Peanut Plant: Its Cultivation And UsesJones, B. W.
Science
The Peanut Plant: Its Cultivation And Uses
Jones, B. W.
Peanuts
=Peanut Hay.=--If dug and cured before frost touches them, and before
the leaves fall to any great extent, peanut vines make a very good
provender for all stock. Some say it is better than blade fodder for
horses and mules, but we are not prepared to advance this extravagant
claim for it. It is, however, certainly an excellent article of fodder
for cattle, sheep, mules, and horses, and if many sap peanuts are left
on the vines, stock that is not worked much, will need no other feed
during the winter months to keep them in good condition.
Most planters, accordingly, make it an object to try to save the vines
for hay, and aim to dig the crop before they are injured by frost.
After a killing frost touches them, the vines are next to worthless as a
feed. In fact, frost-bitten peanut vines are harmful, rather than
beneficial, to stock, often causing colics, and endangering the life of
a valuable horse or mule. Peanut vines, even the best of them, unharmed
by frost, should not be fed very largely to horses. There is always a
good deal of grit and dust upon them, and much of this taken into the
stomach, cannot but be more or less harmful to the animals.
And yet, despite these few drawbacks, peanut hay has proved to be a
valuable forage, and one that the peanut-planter could not well dispense
with, inasmuch as so many do not make enough of other forage to serve
them, and must, therefore, depend on the peanut crop to help them out.
Thus the planter is benefited in several ways through this crop. He gets
a valuable staple to sell, and one that always commands the ready cash,
he fattens his hogs on the pods left in the ground, and he secures a
large amount of very good hay in the vines. Thus he is doubly benefited,
and no matter how low the price of peanuts may be, the farmer does not,
and cannot, ordinarily, lose much on the cultivation of this great crop.
If he does not risk too much on commercial fertilizers, which no planter
of this crop ever should do, he runs little risk of suffering any
crushing loss thereon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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