Hay. Four tons of alfalfa hay contain more nutrients than ten tons of silage, and hay is cheaper to raise and cheaper to harvest. The intensive dairy farmer makes alfalfa hay form as large a part of his ration as practical, for a certain variety is needed. However, figuring alfalfa as against corn fodder, the fodder is the cheaper under average conditions. The by-product farmer will do well to use as little alfalfa as he can and still get good results.
The principal value in alfalfa hay for cattle feeding is in the leaves and the results obtained are so dependent upon the kind of hay we get that we consider that part of the secret of feeding lies in putting up the hay. It has been demonstrated by Headdon of the Colorado Experiment Station that where alfalfa is put up by the most careful method, three hundred and fifty pounds of leaves are lost for every ton of hay put up. Where alfalfa is carelessly handled and most of the leaves fall off, we lose as much as three thousand pounds of leaves for every ton of hay put up, and the hay that remains is of very little value so far as milk cows are concerned. Not only do we lose the leaves of alfalfa but we can lose the food value out of the leaf very easily. The alfalfa leaf is very easily digested and the nutrients so easily digested are leached out by rain. They even leave the plant when it is bleached in the sun. The stem of the alfalfa has some value, however, if it is cut young enough to be tender. Old, woody stems will show well in a chemical test but will show poorly in a profit test on a dairy farm.
We can judge the feeding value of alfalfa by its color. Well-cured hay should be pea-green, without must and not dusty. We get more alfalfa by raking it soon after it is mowed, and by curing it in windrows or in shocks, than if we let it remain spread out to bleach in the sun. Besides curing hay in the shock, I have seen another method used and good results obtained where the barn was very large in proportion to the amount of hay put in it. Hay was hauled in from the field very green and dumped by slings along the center of the barn without being tramped. After several days it is spread. The heated hay, when lifted up in the air and piled up loose, cools off rapidly, the heat helping greatly to dry off the moisture. Such hay will not heat again and it retains its color.
I do not think there is any other grass so valuable for hay as is alfalfa. Before we had alfalfa we used cane and millet. Sweet clover is favored by some. It is about the same as alfalfa chemically, and I do not doubt that it makes a good hay if not allowed to get woody. I have never used sweet clover as hay. Sudan grass is a sorghum and has come into some favor. It has about the same food value, however, as the corn stalk which the farmer already has available.
Corn Fodder. There are thousands of acres of corn stalks being pastured in Nebraska and Iowa that have not much more value as they stand in the field than the dead grass by the roadside. Saved and utilized they are the great source of wealth that as yet is almost untouched. Their yield is like a low-grade ore found in abundance. Dry fodder containing no grain is worth at least half as much per ton as alfalfa and the yield is approximately two tons per acre. I say it is worth half as much but I have to guess at it. It contains just as many pounds of digestible nutrients per ton as alfalfa and more than prairie hay. How much it is worth depends largely upon the conditions under which it is fed. It costs no more to cut and shock fodder than to husk a field of corn. Cutting up the fodder and husking out the ears by machine is not an expensive operation. Remember that hay must be brought in from the field. The entire cost of cut fodder for feeding can fairly be figured as about the cost of operating the machine that does the cutting and husking. It is the cheapest feed that we can get.
Many years ago there were several large corn shredding machines sold throughout this territory. They husked the corn and shredded the fodder but they did not prove a success because fodder, unless unusually dry, gets musty if cut up fine with an ensilage cutter and piled up. The new and really successful way of handling fodder is with a small machine that runs with a small gasoline engine. A supply of fodder should be cut up every ten days or two weeks until a time comes when the fodder is real dry—not earlier than December. Then the job may be finished and the feed will last indefinitely.
Silage Without Corn. Some feeders put this cut-up fodder in a silo as soon as the corn is dry enough to keep in the crib. They run water in with it and all reports seem to agree that it makes a good silage. I have not tried this, but I hope the scheme has in it the final solution of the problem. Silo agents have been in the habit of arguing that you can afford to feed silage, corn and all, to all of the stock on the place and let the corn stalks that are not put into the silo go to waste. I do not agree with them. Instead of putting fifteen acres of corn in the silo where much of it is to be fed to young stock and horses, use twenty or even twenty-five acres of stalks alone and you will get just about as good results. But think of the saving. The corn stalks are a by-product. You had to farm so many acres to get them. A part of your business is raising corn and the stalks are paid for by the grain.
Suppose then you feed grain grown on five acres of land. You are using just one-third of the acres to feed your cattle that would be used if you had put in fifteen acres of corn and fed it, corn and all. This shows the advantages of the by-product producer. It fills in the big gap that has been forgotten. It is figuring on a cost basis rather than that of yield or speed in production.
Last winter a feeding experiment was tried at the Wisconsin Experiment Station in which corn silage with grain in was tested against silage from which the corn had been picked. The result showed that the cows ate slightly more silage when it contained the grain and yielded on an average three pounds more milk. The cost of the milk produced with and without the grain in the silage was exactly the same. Silage was figured at $6.50 per ton, corn and all, and without grain at $4.00. Since the average farmer has cornstalks to waste and only has to figure the cost of saving them, they should not be figured at nearly two thirds of the corn crop, even after they have been made into silage.
However, it usually pays to feed grain to cows that are milking. The main saving in the use of husked fodder lies in getting cheaper feed for growing young stock and feeding dry cows.