Milch Cows and Dairy Farming / Comprising the Breeds, Breeding, and Management, in Health and Disease, of Dairy and Other Stock, the Selection of Milch Cows, with a Full Explanation of Guenon's Method; The Culture of Forage Plants, and the Production of Milk, Butter, and Cheese: Embodying the Most Recent Improvements, and Adapted to Farming in the United States and British Provinces. With a Treatise upon the Dairy Husbandry of Holland; To Which Is Added Horsfall's System of Dairy Management

by Charles Louis Flint

Red Clover

([Fig. 69]) is an artificial grass of the leguminous family, and one of the most valuable of cultivated plants for feeding to dairy cows. It flourishes best on tenacious soils and stiff loams. Its growth is rapid, and a few months after sowing are sufficient to supply an abundant sweet and nutritious food. In the climate of New England clover should be sown in the spring of the year, while most of the natural grasses do far better sown in the fall. It is often sown with perfect success on the late snows of March or April, and soon finds its way down into the soil and takes a vigorous root. It is valuable not only as a forage plant, but as shading the ground, and thereby increasing its fertility.

The introduction of clover among the cultivated plants of the farm has done more, perhaps, for modern agriculture than that of any other single plant. It has now come to be considered indispensable in all good dairy districts.

Fig. 70. White Clover.