STOCK BLOATING ON ALFALFA 241 



least a foot or more high. The animals should be filled 

 as full as possible with green grass or some feed that they 

 like. They should be turned in at about 10 o'clock in the 

 morning and afterward left always on the field, not being 

 taken off at night or during rains. It is when animals 

 have been away from the field and become hungry that 

 they eat too rapidly on return and are troubled by bloat- 

 ing. For the good of the pasture it should be so wide 

 that it would never be eaten close, but once or twice a 

 year the mower should go over the parts not eaten and 

 the cut forage made into hay. Thus treated, alfalfa is 

 little injured by being pastured. Always, in frosty coun- 

 tries, all animals should be taken from the field before 

 time of very hard frosts, and no foot should afterward 

 tread upon it until growing weather of the following year. 

 Not only is it bad for alfalfa to be trodden upon in cold 

 weather (except in the arid West), but it is injurious to 

 animals to eat frosted alfalfa. Furthermore, alfalfa is 

 better to have left on it a growth of at least a foot in 

 height. 



Alfalfa as a Soiling Crop. Should one wish to get the 

 utmost from one's soil, and be willing to perform the 

 needed labor, one should sow alfalfa and feed animals by 

 soiling. An acre of moderately good alfalfa will yield 

 during the season from 20,000 to 30,000 pounds of green 

 forage. A. cow will consume, it is estimated, about 30 

 pounds a day of alfalfa with access to some other feeds, 

 grasses and perhaps a morsel of dry corn. Thus a cow 

 would in a month consume about 900 to 1,000 pounds of 

 alfalfa forage, the acre keeping 25 to 30 cows for a 

 month. In cutting alfalfa for soiling one should manage 



