Just briefly I'd like to give you the observational work that we have done with honeylocust. For mules in a feeding test we fed a team of mules for 30 days nothing but honeylocust and hay, and these mules were in fine shape when they came out at the end of the feeding test. You say that's an awfully short feeding test. It is, but we had very few pods. Then for cows I have gone into it more extensively. I have a cow myself, and I have fed that cow honeylocust pods and that was all the grain she had through the winter months, and got excellent milk production. You get excellent milk flavor from these pods and an increase in milk production.
A very interesting thing happened. I went out in the community to gather pods from the wild trees for a feeding test, and there was a lady who owned a farm pretty close to our project. I went over and talked with her about getting the pods from her trees to feed to my cows for feeding tests, and it was O. K. But when I left she got to thinking the thing over, and she decided that if honeylocust pods were good for my cow they would be good for her cow! So I went back in a few days' time—the pods weren't mature when I went the first time. I went back in a few days and I didn't ask the lady if I could get the pods, I just stopped on the side of the road and we put a darky up in the tree to shake the pods off. And we saw a little darky coming across the field, just a streak. He said, "Missus says come over to the house." I went over there, and she was just a little bit embarrassed, but she said, "Mr. Moore, I have decided if honeylocust was good for the goose it was good for the gander, so I have been feeding honeylocust to my cows." And she went on with that story and said that she had been selling milk to a fraternity over in town, and the boys at the fraternity, after she had fed the cows honeylocust for a week or two, asked her what had happened to her milk, and she told them—she said honestly she was afraid she was going to lose the trade, she thought something bad was wrong with it. She told them, that so far as she knew there wasn't anything. They said, "Have you done anything to it?" "No, we haven't." They said, "Well, it's the best milk we have ever had, and we can tell the difference in the taste." And then she told them what she had done. She wouldn't tell them before.
Now, we have had story after story coming to us to corroborate that. Now, I have never seen with my cow any difference in milk flavor, either good or bad, but my wife can definitely tell, and she is very particular about her butter, because she likes to sell that. I can quit feeding honeylocust a few days, and my wife will say, "How come you quit feeding honeylocust to the cow?" It is that definite.
There are two things I want to mention: The value of a combination of a perennial ground cover with your honeylocust tree, and then I want to mention the fact that honeylocust planted in a pasture will give no benefit whatsoever. You are going to have to grow your honeylocust on the outside, harvest the pods and feed them just like you would corn, or you are going to have to plant your honeylocust on a barren hillside someplace that doesn't grow anything else—and I think honeylocust will grow with a little fertilizer on about the poorest soil you have, the most eroded soil you have, with a little care—then pasture it after your trees are large enough so that the cow won't eat the limbs. There is something about the tree itself that a cow loves. They will chew the bark and chew the limbs right down to the main trunk.
We have tried planting those trees at four years of age, even, in pastures, and we just can't get them to survive. In fact, the cows and the mules in our pasture ate the trees down to the stumps in the wintertime before they ever started putting out leaves in the spring. So it has been a problem. (See Dr. Diller's pasture tree-guard paper in this report.—Ed.)
This value that you can get from growing honeylocust and Lespedeza sericea on the same soil is the same as with honeylocust and alfalfa if you are in the alfalfa belt, or something like that with other perennial legumes. These are the benefits that I think you can get from a combination: In the first place, the soil is completely protected. In the second place, a concentrate and hay can be grown on the same acreage. Third, a good grazing and feeding out program can be maintained. If you plant your honeylocust on a hillside someplace and let the trees get large enough so that the cows won't eat them up, have your ground cover established, by the time that you are ready to pasture it you can put your cattle in. We had this combination, and I think it would have worked out very well if it had not been destroyed. We had our Lespedeza sericea for our summer grazing crop; then we had winter annuals planted in the Lespedeza sericea for our winter grazing, and the honeylocust was the fattening crop or finishing-off crop.
What we had planned to do was turn the cattle in on this last plot about January 1st, let them graze crimson clover, or bur clover, or any other winter ground cover that grows in your section until the Lespedeza sericea came on in the early summer. Then they'd graze the Lespedeza sericea till the honeylocust pods started falling in the fall, and they'd fatten off on the honeylocust, and you'd put them on the market just before the Christmas holidays.
Then fourth, the management cost is very low. Fifth, the weed problems in your pasture are controlled. Sixth, you get maximum production from the soil. You get your grain and your hay from the same piece of land.
Now, that's all that I plan to give on this subject. There may be some questions come up that we can discuss later.
A Member: What is the sugar content?