LIVE STOCK breeders' ASSOCIATION. 167 



is SO deep-roote ; as deep as you have any soil alfalfa roots will go 

 down. If the soil is two feet deep, the alfalfa roots will go down two 

 feet; if ten feet and even twenty feet, the alfalfa roots will go to the 

 bottom and even farther than that. And another thing: alfalfa comes 

 up so early in the spring. Soon after you have your corn planted, 

 you have an alfalfa crop to cut. It is green the first of the season 

 when nothing else is out at all. The time to cut it is when the leaves 

 are beginning to to drop off. After it is cut, in only fifteen minutes, 

 up it comes again, and in 30 days you have your second crop ready 

 to cut. We always get four crops in our country. Of course some 

 of the crops may be light if you don't have enough rain, but you will have 

 them anyway, and you have to take off the light crops or it will not do 

 its best — you will miss the subsequent crop. Your third crop may not 

 be very heavy, but cut it off just the same and you may get a fourth 

 cutting that will be good. 



We average four tons an acre and sometimes get five or six. Up 

 at Ames, Iowa, they tell me they got seven tons ; that's a pretty good 

 yield. Now, about the use of alfalfa when you get it. It is fine for dairy 

 cows. Down in Eastern Pennsylvania, where the dairymen are trying 

 to do big things, we are sending them alfalfa hay for their cows, and 

 they tell me great stories about it. One man down there who has 

 registered cattle and is trying to make them give all the milk possible 

 by feeding them the best he knows how, said to me, "Mr. Wing, since 

 I have fed your alfalfa hay to my cows they give 20 per cent more 

 milk." Isn't that marvelous? Now alfalfa hay is the best feed for 

 working horses and the best for colts. It is the very best thing for all the 

 four-footed babies on the farm. It is so full of protein, it dissolves 

 and goes into muscle and goes to make milk and builds up the animal. 

 Out in California the best thoroughbreds are fed on alfalfa hay ; they 

 eat it in the meadows summer and wdnter. When I first saw those Cal- 

 ifornia thoroughbreds I did not know what they were. They are so 

 fine and well developed. 



Now, of course, it has a drawback. You are taking food from the 

 soil all the time and leaving the soil poor. You have been told here 

 that you could take off only 1,000 crops and you have your soil worn 

 out. But you know some soils will wear out quicker than that. You 

 remember the piece of land I told you about last night that I bought — the 

 clay soil which I enriched with manure and put into corn in '85. Then 

 in '86 I sowed it to alfalfa. I remember that year well, because 

 it rained so much — 32 days every month, but I got a good stand of 

 alfalfa. Then during '87, '88, '89, and for five or six years, I cut four 

 hay crops every year. Took off all that liay and put nothing back. 



