Box Rack for Feeding Alfalfa to Cattle
CHAPTER IX.
Pasturing and Soiling
PASTURING NOT ALWAYS ECONOMY
Its perennial nature and the reports of its wonderfully productive and nutritive qualities might naturally lead the farmer, without better acquaintance, to suppose that with alfalfa he has perpetual pasture; that he will open the gate to his live stock in the spring, send for the butcher or buyer in October, and then winter in luxurious leisure. But he finds that the easiest is not always the most profitable way. Pasturing with any stock is an expensive and extravagant method of gathering a valuable crop from high-priced land. Where land is cheap and pasture is wild, stock are not expensive help in gathering a cheap crop; but it is easily demonstrated that when land values are high and a crop value is in a like altitude, man with machinery can do the harvesting more economically than can a cow, a steer or even a sheep.
ALFALFA A TENDER PLANT
In some respects alfalfa does not seem to be a natural pasture plant. The stems are delicate, it will not thrive in a hard, trampled soil, and the crowns when broken off will not revive; if some of the plants bloom and drop their flowers early in the season, they lose vigor and many of them die. These peculiarities would at least indicate that it should not be pastured at all until it has become established, has its crowns well spread, has abundant stems and its roots have a strong start on their underground career. Not an animal should be turned on an alfalfa field until the second or third year if it is desired that the stand endure for several years, nor should it be pastured too early in the spring or too late in the fall. There should be something of a growth left for winter protection. Careful alfalfa raisers are known who pasture their older fields, but never put on a full quota of stock until they have cut over the field when the plants are first coming into bloom. They insist that this cutting invigorates and gives the plants new life. They then pasture quite closely until some time in September, after which there is time for some final growth for winter protection.
A GOOD SWINE PASTURE
A chief exception that most farmers insist on is that it is an excellent pasture for pigs and, if it is not stocked too heavily, its use for grazing young swine will not largely decrease the yield of hay. Its marked protein property seems to give to the pigs a superior growth of frame and flesh. Farmers claim that pigs a few weeks old turned into an alfalfa field derive almost their entire living from it and leave the sows two weeks earlier than other pigs, coming in September with a gain of from 100 to 125 pounds, while the field has yielded its three cuttings of hay. Of course, if too many pigs are grazed, the hay yield will be less. But even here the question of labor versus hay must be considered.
DANGERS TO CATTLE AND SHEEP
The greatest objection to pasturing alfalfa is its bloating cattle and sheep. Hogs and horses do not suffer, although a Texas farmer writes that he lost some pigs from something similar to bloat that he attributed to the alfalfa. But this may be considered questionable, as thousands have regularly pastured hogs and horses on alfalfa with no symptoms of bloat. From hundreds of inquiries sent out by the experiment stations, it is determined that over ninety per cent of those who have pastured cattle or sheep on alfalfa have lost one or more animals by doing so, yet many report having pastured the same kind of stock on alfalfa for years, regularly every season, without loss. Careful investigations have been made with the purpose of finding out why some have been immune while others suffered. Since, in the cases of loss, only a small proportion of the animals pastured are affected, it may be inferred that much depends upon the nature and condition of the individual animal. Practically every western station has carefully experimented, following the directions of men who have been free from loss, yet it has cost each station valuable animals.