Keeping one cow / Being the experience of a number of practical writers, in a clear and condensed form, upon the management of a single milch cow

by Various

ALFALFA OR LUCERN.

BY SAM’L C. HAMMER, DOWNEY CITY, CAL.

I have lived in Tennessee, in Texas, and now reside in California. I have been using Alfalfa for some eight or ten years, and from my own personal care of and attention to this article, I maintain one can obtain more milk the year round from it, without change to other food, than from any one thing grown. Besides, Alfalfa can be grown at less expense, and is attended with less labor, whether fed green or cured, than any other feed.

Alfalfa can be grown in Canada, it is said. If so, then any one has the chance to try this wonderful friend to the farmer. Once sown on deeply cultivated land, free of weeds, it is good for ten years, or even more, with us. Twenty pounds is abundant seed for an acre—some think too much; but it should be sown thickly. Let it stand thick, and it is finer and more tender. Where sown sparsely it becomes woody and coarse. It can be cut here as early as March, where mowing and not grazing is adhered to, and it should never be grazed or “staked” (fed off by tethered cattle). From seven to nine cuttings can be obtained from it, and from fifteen to twenty tons of cured hay a year made to the acre; that is, if on good land and if the crop fully occupies the ground, and is cut just as a few scattering blooms are observed. This hay must be cured as rapidly as possible, raked in windrows and bunched the second day, rather letting it cure in bunches than in any other manner, to prevent leaves falling off; then housing or “shedding” it soon as possible, sprinkling salt through it as stacked, to prevent mould.

Alfalfa needs no top-dressing with fertilizers and manure, but simply a severe cross-harrowing with a very sharp-toothed harrow, bearing the weight of a man. The more the Alfalfa is torn and split up the better it will grow. This harrowing should be done in spring before it commences its first growth. After growing a few years, the stools project, in many places, above the surface of the ground. If an implement could be devised for the purpose of cutting off all these old stalks just below the surface, then seed lightly, giving a good harrowing, the plants would be renewed, and would thicken up rapidly, for wherever a stalk or root is cut off, dozens of new shoots spring up in its place.

However, I advocate a change of diet for brutes as well as mankind, and therefore take for the family cow a half acre of most excellent ground. I will suppose that one half of it—that is a quarter acre—is well set in Alfalfa. The rest I would have plowed twice, very deep, smoothed and laid off in drills for carrots, which, at the proper season (with us in February or March), I would enrich in the furrows with any well-rotted manure. For Alfalfa almost any good soil suits, for I find it adapts itself to various soils and endures a great deal of rough treatment, but in order to get the best results it should be well treated. I prefer a moderately sandy soil, which is naturally moist. On dry, mellow ground, it will send down a tap-root ten feet. I have drawn roots out of very sandy soil when digging post holes that would measure six feet. They seek moisture during dry weather, and although I have had Alfalfa die down, the ground being parched and cracked, yet when the fall or winter rains begin, it springs up in a few days.

As soon as the Alfalfa comes in, feed it alone, salting as suits one’s own idea. When the first scattering blooms appear I would cut the remainder—namely, that which had not been cut each day for the cow. I would then cure it as rapidly as possible, and put it under cover, sprinkling salt over it. I now advocate and practice feeding the cured hay in preference to the green. By the latter you obtain a greater flow of milk, but with the former I consider the milk richer, and this is the experience of dairymen with whom I have conversed.

A cow learns to eat the cured fodder almost as readily as the green, and all danger of bloat is obviated. Some may think because I am in California that irrigation makes some difference, but my Alfalfa grows without it. I cut mine six times last summer, 1879, and it was an exceptionally dry and hot season. Our rains fall mostly in winter, and that has to do us until the next winter.

Now, as to the cow, I would place her in a corral or lot, we’ll say, of one-fourth to half an acre in size, giving her a comfortable house or shed for winter, in which I think she should be fastened by a closed door in cold rainy weather. At other times she should be allowed the run of the lot, having access to good fresh water at least twice a day. Shade trees for summer’s hot sun are indispensable. In this lot or corral you have all the manure where it can be gathered up daily or weekly, and composted or housed, ready to be spread on the ground for future crops. Some would say a cow should be curried every morning. They certainly do enjoy it, but many California farmers never saw such a thing done. I think it should be done just before the animals begin to shed their old coats; afterwards I see little use of it.