388 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



labor. But the question right now seems to me to resolve itself into 

 a question of procedure. Wliat character of lands may be econom- 

 ically seeded down to pastures? At Cornell, the Roberts pasture, 

 which has been in continuous pasture for about twenty years, with 

 a variety of grasses, is on a very steep slope, which, but for the 

 covering of grass, would have eroded, or washed away. 



Dr. Waters, when at the Missouri Experiment Station, conducted 

 some experiments on pastures and the cost of producing beef in that 

 part of Missouri, and be found that with steers pastured at 75c. per 

 head per month, a gain of 1.G5 lbs. per day was secured and he found 

 that the cost on this basis Avas as low as |1.60 per 100 lbs. of gain. 

 You may think this is too low. At ^1.00, ])er head per month for 

 pasture a gain of 1.85 pounds, daily was secured at a cost of only 

 |1.90 per 100 lbs. of gain. These prices may be exceptionally low, but 

 they show what has been done. In the winter, he got a gain of 5.40 

 lbs. per bushel of corn, and in the summer, when they fed grass with 

 the corn, they got a gain of 6.8 pounds for bushel of corn. In other 

 words, he got a greater return per bushel of corn when the steers 

 were on grass than he did in the winter time when fed hay. 



In an experiment in Illinois, when 1 was there some years ago; 

 we had two acres of blue grass in each of tAvo plots, on each of 

 which we kept two steers. On one lot we kept two steers on two 

 acres of land, without any suplementary feed and they kept in good 

 condition and made good gain. On the second two acres we kept two 

 steers and two shoats. The steers of lot two were fed a half bushel 

 of corn daily, and the slioats followed and picked up the corn that 

 the steers dropped. Both steers and shoats kept in fine condition, 

 and in the fall the shoats that followed the steers in the summer 

 made gains at the rate of fifteen pounds of pork per bushel of corn. 

 That gives you a little idea of the capacity of the pasture, a steer 

 per acre, plus the shoats. An average acre of pasture is expected to 

 produce one hundred and fifty pounds of beef yearly. 



I wish to call you attention to some experiments in Virginia con- 

 ducted by Prof. Carrier, and described in Bulletin 204 of the Virginia 

 Experiment Station. A field of twenty acres was laid off into eight 

 equal plots. The tests, covering three years, included, alternate and 

 continuous grazing and heavy grazing, and harrowing and discing. 

 On these eiffht plots the gain for an average of three years was 160 

 pounds of live weight per acre annually. For the heavy grazing it 

 was 100 pounds and for the light grazing it was only a little over 

 half as much. No particular benefit was derived from either discing 

 or harrowing. Light g7\azing encouraged the encroachment of weeds 

 in the pasture. 



