236 FEEDS AND FEEDING 



Sweet clover is becoming a popular pasture crop in certain sections 

 of the corn belt, especially when grown in combination with bluegrass. 

 Rusk of the Illinois Station 25 has secured very favorable results with 

 sweet clover as a pasture for beef cattle. It also furnishes good pasture 

 for swine, but is excelled by alfalfa and red clover, where these crops 

 thrive. (987) 



An annual variety of sweet clover, 26 recently introduced by Hughes of 

 the Iowa Station, is promising, especially as a soil improver and as 

 an emergency hay crop. 



A yellow-flowered biennial sweet clover, Melilotus officinalis, two 

 weeks earlier and somewhat smaller in growth than the biennial white 

 sweet clover, has been quite widely introduced in the United States. 



353. Crimson clover, Trifolium incarnatum. This annual, adapted to 

 mild climates, is grown chiefly in the Atlantic seaboard states from 

 New Jersey to South Carolina. Here it is treated as a winter annual, 

 being sown in the late summer or early fall, blossoming the following 

 spring, and dying by early summer. Crimson clover has proved vastly 

 helpful to the agriculture of these states, where it is used mainly as 

 green manure and as a winter cover crop. It is widely used for 

 pasture and hay, and to a more limited extent for soilage. This clover 

 is suited to a wide range of soils, succeeding on both sandy and clay 

 land if well drained. Of all the clovers it is said to have the widest 

 adaptability to southern conditions. 27 An especially valuable feature 

 is that the crop may be harvested or turned under as green manure 

 early enough in the spring to permit the raising of other crops the same 

 year. 28 The climate of the humid Pacific coast section is well adapted 

 to crimson-clover culture. 



When grown for hay it is important that crimson clover be cut by 

 the time the flowers at the base of the most advanced heads have faded. 

 After this, the minute barbed hairs of the blossom heads and stems 

 become hard and wiry. If hay from over-ripe crimson clover is fed to 

 horses or mules, these hairs sometimes mat together in the digestive tract, 

 forming felt-like masses which may grow to the size of baseballs and 

 finally plug the intestines, causing death. When over-ripe hay must be 

 fed to horses or mules, which are usually the only animals affected, 

 to reduce the danger it should be given with other roughage, preferably 

 with succulent feeds, or else wet thoroly 12 hours before feeding. Cut at 

 the right stage, crimson clover hay is about equal to that from red 

 clover. 29 According to Piper 30 yields of hay from good stands average 

 about 1.25 tons per acre. (615) During a short season in the spring 

 before it matures, crimson clover furnishes valuable pasturage or soilage 

 in advance of grass or other clovers, and in warm sections it may be 

 utilized as late fall or winter pasture. 



"Information to the authors. "N. C. Clr. 7. 



*U. S. D. A. Cir. 169. "Del. Bui. 89. 



"Ala. Bui. 147. "Forage Plants, p. 432. 



