Abstract A diet containing ground wheat, soybean meal, alfalfa leaf meal, and vitamin and mineral supplements (Hammond and Titus, 1943) supports satisfactory growth in chickens. In certain parts of the United States such vegetable-protein supplements as cottonseed meal, peanut meal, and corn gluten meal are usually more available than soybean meal. Therefore, a series of experiments was conducted to determine to what extent it is practical to use other vegetable-protein supplements in place of soybean meal. Ground hempseed, peanut meal, cottonseed meal both with and without additions of ferric chloride, corn gluten meal, and linseed meal were used to replace part or all of the soybean meal in a control diet containing 35 percent of soybean meal. Ferric chloride was added to the cottonseed meal at the level used by Swensen, Fieger, and Upp (1942) to bind the gossypol. In these experiments, however, the ferric chloride was highly detrimental. Chicks fed . . .