FEEDING DAIRY COWS. 47 



of palatability, of digestibility, and the other lacks them, and 

 those elements are just as important, I would almost say more 

 important, than the chemical constituents. You want some- 

 thing in the winter time that will come as near as possible to sup- 

 plying that lack, and there are two ways in which you can get it 

 approximately, one through the silo and the other through the 

 root cellar. Roots are all right; I have nothing to say against 

 them. They are a healthful, wholesome food, but the only 

 trouble is that we Yankees do not take to the raising of them. 

 A Scotch friend tells me it is because we do not know enough. 

 However that may be, the fact is that we do not like to raise 

 them. It is too much labor and comes pretty near to being 

 drudgery. But we can raise the corn and put it into the silo and 

 get that green, succulent, easily digested food for the cow by that 

 means, and we can get more of it in quantity than in any other 

 way. 



The second crop I would mention for production on the farm 

 is the clover crop. In the first place, it gives you a good quan- 

 tity of feed. You can raise four or five tons to the acre per year, 

 if you handle it properly. In the second place, it gives you a 

 food strong in protein ; not strong enough to balance up the corn 

 and give you a complete ration from ensilage and clover alone, 

 however. Further than that these two would make too bulky a 

 ration, but it gives you, probably, of all the crops which our cli- 

 mate and soil will produce equally well, the one strongest in 

 protein. It does the most to save your pocketbook. ]\Iore than 

 this, whenever you take a crop of clover off from your field, 

 instead of detracting from the fertility of that field you have 

 added to it, because of the power which the clover plant has of 

 taking its nitrogen out of the air, storing it up in the roots and 

 stems and putting it where other plants can use it. In addition 

 to this the clover roots penetrate deeply into the soil and bring up 

 plant food from a depth which most grasses never reach. When 

 you take off a crop of clover you have left the land richer, for 

 these reasons. But when you take off a crop of timothy you 

 have left it poorer. 



I put the two crops of corn and clover ahead, for the quantity 

 and quality and because they are adapted to our soil and climate, 

 but, as I have hinted, these two alone will not make a complete, 

 satisfactory feed for the cow. You must have more protein, and 



