294 MEADOWS AND PASTURES 



Feeding on Pastures. The thing most helpful to a 

 pasture is to feed animals on it some rich feed, as cot- 

 tonseed-meal, alfalfa hay, or, in fact, any ration that 

 makes the animals thrive, though feeds rich in nitrogen 

 add most to the value of the grass. English farmers 

 know this well and buy our linseed meal or cake, and 

 cottonseed cake as well, which they feed to bullocks and 

 sheep on grass. They feed, also, our corn, but say that 

 they do not see so much benefit to the land where corn 

 has been fed as where cake has been fed, and this is but 

 natural, since the cake is rich in nitrogen (derived from 

 the protein of these feeds), while corn is rather deficient 

 in protein. Assuredly feeding on pasture is the best 

 method of making it good, and commonly profit is de- 

 rived from the feeding operations as well. There is need 

 of care that the feed troughs do not always remain in 

 one spot and that the animals do not destroy the grasses 

 by tramping it into mud during the wet time of the year. 

 It is all too common in America to place feed troughs in 

 the pasture or feedlots and leave them in one spot for 

 years. Thus there is wasted, and much more than 

 wasted, a great deal of manure, the net result of which 

 for years will be the rank-growing jimpson weed and 

 dog fennel. Feed troughs and racks should always be 

 on runners so that horses can quickly move them from 

 one spot to another and thus have the manure well dis- 

 tributed over the pasture. The yield of grass may in 

 this manner be very much more than doubled, and it is 

 doubtful whether there is any better way of recovering 

 the fertility deposited by the cattle than by a wise man- 

 agement of pasture grasses to take it up. 



