174 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



They do not like to keep more than six hogs together. If you put more 

 than that together they will run it out Y/ith trampling. They make 

 paths through it, and in that way they keep the alfalfa free, and do not 

 interfere with making a crop of hay. I saw the railroad men and they 

 said they could keep the alfalfa hogs separate from the corn hogs dur- 

 ing the cholera times by disinfecting their cars and making separate 

 chutes for them where they are loaded and unloaded, and allow nothing 

 else to go through them except alfalfa hogs. Now, I am satisfied that 

 there is a good deal in this. I want you to see that we can grow alfalfa 

 Alfalfa should be cured when the bloom first begins to come out. Ii 

 you wait you will find it very difficult to cure. Alfalfa is certainly a 

 good hog feed in the winter. The gentlemen I visited feed five pounds 

 of alfalfa to a pound of corn, and they find it profitable. They have 

 kept books on it and I have no reason to doubt their word. To raise 

 alfalfa you must prepare your seed bed in the best possible manner. The 

 bes.t way is to let it to someone to raise beets on for a year and then It 

 is just ready for the alfalfa. In the fall take your land and get it into 

 the best possible shape. Start weeds and then disc your land; and when 

 the weeds start again disc it again. Soav your alfalfa about the first 

 week in May or the last week in April on up to the first of June, and 

 when it beginS( to put out blossosm cut it off and mow it again and 

 lagain. You have to cut it off every time it begins to grow. 



Another gentleman went on to sa}' : 



I have a friend who sowed three acres the last of April. It is about 

 three to six inches high and in three or four weeks it will have to bo 

 cut off. He has been growing alfalfa for some time. He is a breeder 

 of Aberdeen-Angus cattle and when the alfalfa gets up about so high 

 he turns them on it and cuts it down. Then he lets it grow again and 

 gets a second crop the same year. There is one thing of which Mr. 

 Wallace spoke that is very important. I hat is, that it should not be 

 pastured early in the fall and it should noL be pastured the first year. 

 If it is left to grow, probably one to four inches high, and the frost settles 

 down on it, it will preserve it. 



]\Ir. Munson asked : 



You speak of cutting alfalfa fine to ieed hogs. We are not fixed 

 here to feed alfalfa. Is not clover prepared in the same way just ns 

 good ? 



To this Air. AA^allace repHed : 



I think if you will chop your clover fine and put corn with it, it 

 will do just as well. 



On the subject of feeding- clover to hogs Mr. Alunson said : 

 I read an article about feeding hogs clover. I did not believe it, 

 so one morning I tried it. I had ten old sows, and when I put the 

 ■clover out I did not see one of them, but; before long they were every 

 one there and ate it all. 



