Horses do not need a heavy ration of alfalfa hay. Fed with grain, probably 10 or 15 pounds of it is equal to a manger full of other hay. As they become accustomed to the alfalfa it may be increased a little, and the grain decreased. It is a rich food and should not be used as freely as hays with less protein.

Prof. L. A. Merrill of the Utah station made six tests of alfalfa hay in comparison with timothy for horses under varying conditions of work, and found that it was less difficult to maintain their weight with alfalfa. The appearance of the horses in every comparison was in favor of the alfalfa-fed horse, and no ill results were noted on their health by long-continued alfalfa feeding. Fourteen-hundred pound horses at hard work could be maintained in condition on 32.6 pounds of alfalfa hay per day, and at rest 20 pounds was sufficient for the same horses.

The quantity of hay fed on most farms could be reduced at least one-half.

With all its merits alfalfa hay is by no means a properly balanced ration for all purposes, and those unacquainted with this fact are liable to feed it, exclusively or otherwise, in such quantities as are both extravagant and harmful. D. C. Smead, a veterinarian of note, in writing about using the hay in too great quantities, especially in feeding horses, says this:

“There is more danger in deranging the digestion or man or beast by an excess of protein than by overfeeding on a carbonaceous food. The proteins in food are more easily acted upon by the digestive fluids, and thus more easily digested and carried into the blood, where an excess means work for the kidneys to carry it off. We can founder a horse more easily on wheat than on corn for this very reason. Alfalfa has a nutritive ratio of practically 1 to 4. An ordinary 1000-pound horse, if given all it will eat of it, will eat from thirty to forty pounds in twenty-four hours. As the alfalfa contains about 11 per cent of easily digested proteins, you will readily see that the horse would be taking into his system nearly four and one-half pounds of protein.

“About two and one-half pounds of digestible protein is all that an ordinary horse or cow of a thousand pounds weight, when at work or in milk, can utilize. In the alfalfa hay we have nearly twice as much as is needed. If it were not for some of it being physicked off, we would soon have an animal with overworked kidneys or muscular stiffness of a rheumatic nature. In case of a mare in foal, when fed on alfalfa and nothing else, the chances are she would drop her colt prematurely, or if it went full time, the colt would be a nice, fat, little, plump fellow, with little vitality and with a tendency to rickets or bowel disease, all because the alfalfa was too narrow a ration.

“Now if we fed this mare alfalfa hay once a day or even twice a day, in moderate quantities, say fifteen pounds, and gave her one feed of straw or timothy hay or corn fodder, which are carbonaceous foods, with a quart of oats a day to impart a little nerve force, we would have her practically on right lines. Alfalfa, good as it is, is not an all-sufficient food for any animal. The danger lies in sections where it is being thrown to the animals relishing it so well and the owner having it in such abundance that it will come to be considered all-sufficient, and then trouble is liable to follow. But fed with judgment it is the best of all protein foods, and will enable the farmer to feed wisely and well many of the unmarketable rough foods he raises, like straw and corn stover, the one balancing the other.”

Here and there are horses with digestive apparatus not suited for the best use of alfalfa, but they are rare exceptions rather than the rule.

PRODUCES RAPID GROWTH

One of the foremost horse breeders in America, who constantly maintains upwards of one hundred head of various ages, writes the author this: