' BEST SOILING CROP. 25 



at any time. If you maintain the condition of the cow, you 

 do it at a sacrifice of the flow of milk. If you maintain the 

 flow of milk, the cow will lose in condition. Grass will do 

 both ; corn will do one and not both. 



If I had a soil every way adapted to its gi'owth, my first 

 choice of a soiling plant to use in connection with the pasture, 

 would be lucern. Cattle eat lucern with very great relish. 

 It will gi'ow more than one hundred inches in a year, on a 

 good soil that is suited to its requirements. It wants a deep, 

 loose, mellow soil, and if the soil is open, so that the roots 

 can run down about eight feet to reach water, it is a delight- 

 ful spot for lucern to dwell in. You can prepare a piece of 

 land for this, and splice out your pasture so as to carry your 

 cow through with an abundant supply of good grass. But if 

 you have neither, if you have no piece that you can sow to 

 orchard grass for this purpose, nor lucern, take a piece of 

 common meadow, with mixed grasses, and do as I indicated. 

 Cut the first crop very early, and then you can get a second 

 cutting when you want it to soil your cows. 



Perhaps I have said as much as I need to in regard to the 

 summer food of the cow. I have said as much and perhaps 

 more than you will remember. I will close, then, in regard 

 to pastures, by merely making one suggestion, and that is 

 this : — when you seed a piece of land down for pasture, sow 

 it with all kinds of grass-seed that will gi*ow. It will be bet- 

 ter to sow ten kinds that will not o:row, than to omit one kind 

 that will grow. And by all means sow Kentucky blue-grass, 

 as one of the grasses, and you will get Barre June grass from 

 it. Never omit this, and never omit, gentlemen, when you 

 stock and seed down a piece of land for pasture, to sow every 

 kind of grass indigenous to your soil. They are the most 

 reliable grasses in any spot under heaven, that I ever saw, — 

 the grasses that are native to your soil, the indigenous grasses, — 

 I do not care whether they grow an inch high or twelve feet. 



There is one practice in regard to pasturing that I fear you 

 and I difler about, to which perhaps I may allude, catching 

 the wink of a friend's eye over yonder, with whom I had a 

 conversation, and found that he and I disagreed. He likes to 

 change his cows from one pasture to another. Well, it has 

 long been said that "a change of pasture makes fat calves." 



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