Cotton is one of the most important cash crops and textile materials in the world. The cotton production of China is also ranked at the top of the world, in terms of planting area and total yield. Specifically, the growing area of cotton is annually more than 3 million hectares. Packing storage and transportation of seed cotton have become two main determinants of production capacity in the cotton industry. However, the traditional storage and transportation of seed cotton cannot meet the high demand for the machine-picked cotton area in recent years. The packing facilities inevitably need to fit into the specific producing conditions in China, such as local topography, climate, and vegetation. Mechanical properties of seed cotton are thus fundamental, including compression and stress relaxation, to the optimal design of equipment for harvesting, stacking, and packing. Most previous researches were focused mainly on the mechanical properties of corn, wheat, and herbage straw in agricultural materials. Few studies were reported on the mechanical properties of seed cotton, particularly on compression and stress relaxation. Taking the seed cotton as the research object in this study, a systematic test of mechanical properties was performed on the compression and stress relaxation of seed cotton. An improved Nishihara model and a generalized Maxwell 5-element mechanical model were selected to represent the stress-strain curves of compression and stress relaxation. Various level factors were utilized to verify the constitutive models for the compression and stress relaxation of seed cotton. Relevant model parameters were obtained to determine the influence rules with different factors. The results showed that the determination coefficients of parameters in the constitutive model were beyond 0.9 using the curve-fitting in the compression and stress relaxation of seed cotton. An obvious regularity of coefficients indicated that two models were better suitable for the compression and stress relaxation of seed cotton. There was also a significant influence of water content and feeding quantity on the mechanical properties of seed cotton. Furthermore, the compression stress was positively correlated to the water content and feeding quantity. In addition, the viscosity coefficient and elastic modulus increased significantly at a higher level of water content, due mainly to the porosity of cotton fiber. The cell wall of fiber became stronger and tougher, because the hydrophilic groups on the cellulose macromolecule absorbed water from the external environment. The curl of cotton fiber also made the fiber shrink longitudinally and elastic elongation during the compression under the larger amount of feeding quantity, where there was a significant increase in the overall longitudinal deformability of seed cotton and the elastic modulus. The viscosity coefficient and packing height both rose up significantly, while the pressure transmission path was longer for the naturally stacked seed cotton in the same compression chamber, as the feeding quantity was larger. The main reason was that the bending deformation, contact and extrusion were induced to generate the greater local stress between the fiber bodies during the compressing process of seed cotton. Moreover, the water content was positively correlated to the elastic modulus and viscosity coefficient of seed cotton. This positive correlation was possible because the natural twist of cotton made the fibers entangled, linked, and adhered, difficult to disperse during the stress relaxation of seed cotton. Correspondingly, the elastic modulus and viscosity coefficient increased significantly, as the feeding quantity increased. This improvement was due mainly to a non-uniform attenuation rate of pressure during the stress relaxation of seed cotton. There were much more contact points of fiber curl subjected to the greater feeding amount of seed cotton. The elastic modulus increased, while the relaxation pressure was transferred from the bottom to the top of seed cotton. The adhesion force between fibers and the viscosity coefficient rapidly rose with the motion resistance increased. This finding can provide an insightful theoretical basis to simulate the compression of seed cotton in most machine-picked cotton areas.