214 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Tlic sowing of clover or lucerne as a crop by itself is a practice not much in vogue 

 as yet in this State. We have at the Michigan Experiment (Station succeeded in getting 

 a successful catch in sowing with other crops, but the practice is usually attended with a 

 decreased yield and sometimes almost complete destruction of the lucerne. Several experi- 

 menters who have tried the sand lucerne in a small way in Michigan have sown it with 

 oats and other spring crops, and found upon harvesting the nurse crop that the sudden 

 exposure to the sun and the rapid drying of the soil which followed, has resulted in 

 complete loss ofrthe lucerne. In Buffum's experiments, Bulletin 43, Wyoming Experiment 

 Station, he finds that the first year after sowing he obtained 2,414 more pounds of hay 

 without the oats as a nurse crop than where the oats were used. The difference the 

 nexi year was only 360 pounds in favor of no nurse crop. 



HARVESTING THE CROI\ 



There is danger of allowing the crop to get too ripe before it is harvested. This is a 

 matter of great importance. The crop should be cut as soon as the first blossoms appear. 

 A f<w days, even two or three, of delay in this work will allow the plants to get too 

 mature, the stems become so woody as to be perfectly valueless, while in the process of 

 curing, the leaves will entirely fall off, leaving as the harvested crop nothing but the 

 hard, woody, indigestible stems, which possess but little or no feeding value. In curing 

 the crop, care should be taken to avoid much handling in the drying sun. It is better 

 to iake the crop into windrows and then bunch and allow to cure in this manner slowly, 

 than to let it lie in the swath and give it the frequent stirrings with the hay tedder 

 that are sometimes practiced in making clover hay. With good baying weather there is 

 little difficulty in curing it the day after it is mown while not infrequently it has been 

 cut and hauled the same day. 



USES. 



J n the problem of supplying balanced rations for farm animals, it is usually found 

 that the roughage and even the grain produced on the farm failed to supply the requisite 

 amount of protein or nitrogenous material. The alfalfa and sand lucerne hay furnish 

 a proportion of this protein so high that it can fed with a feed quite' deficient in that 

 material and yet the mixture will result in a balanced feed. For example, the average 

 ration required by farm animals is about one part of protein to six parts of carbohy- 

 drates and fat. The sand lucerne, with the ratio of one to three, which is termed a 

 narrow ration, may be fed with corn, corn fodder, corn stover, timothy and mixed hay 

 or straw, which have wide ratios — that is, they are low in potein — so that the combina- 

 tion will give the desired ratio of one to six. The experiments recorded below go to sub- 

 stantiate this statement. 



The sand lucerne hay has an agreeable aroma, and in feeding it we find all farm 

 animals devouring it with a relish equal to that for the best clover hay. In the western 

 ranches where alfalfa hay constitutes so much of the feed supply, it is the sole feed of 

 many of the farm horses doing the ordinary farm work, and with a little corn or barley it 

 supplies a good working feed. 



Mills, in Bulletin 44, Utah Experiment Station, found that mixing straw in the feed 

 with alfalfa, thereby widening the ration, he got better results in feeding steers than 

 from feeding exclusively on alfalfa as roughage. 



The first crop of sand lucerne is ready to cut from the first to the fifteenth of June. 

 Like alfalfa, it. is quite possible to use it at this time as a soiling crop. And when dairy- 

 men arc depending on some early crop to cut and feed to their cows, the sand lucerne 

 comes in at a very opportune time, preceding, at it does, nearly all of the common forage 

 plants of this latitude. As a hay crop, the analysis given later will indicate clearly its 

 L'i'ent value. 



As a pasture, it comes on early in the spring, grows promptly and rapidly after once 

 being cut or eaten off, and gives a continual supply of green forage throughout the 

 on. Unless cropped off too closely it. withstands perfectly the effects of pasturage, 

 as will be shown in an experiment recorded later. 



