Alfalfa in Kansas. 439 



THE ALFALFA MILLING INDUSTRY. 



By C. W. WRIGHT, Editor Southwestern Grain and Flour Journal. 



Unique among the western industries created during the past twelve 

 years is the manufacture of alfalfa meal. Alfalfa has long been recog- 

 nized as a good forage crop and more: its chemical properties give 

 it a place in feeding-stuffs economy for which no satisfactory substitute 

 has been found. And it is fitting that a citizen of Kansas, the state that 

 leads in the production of the legume, should be first to reduce alfalfa 

 hay to a shredded or chopped form and successfully employ it in the 

 manufacture of a commercial feed. 



This honor belongs to Otto Weiss, of Wichita, whose discovery and the 

 practical use thereof has done more the past ten years to direct the 

 favorable attention of the world to the genuine goodness of alfalfa meal 

 than any other half dozen contributing agencies. 



FIG. 364. A big alfalfa mill at Wichita. 



It was along in 1903 that Mr. Weiss, who divided his time between his 

 wholesale feed business and the raising of fancy and practical poultry, 

 found that the fowls fed upon a hand-mixed ration, in which chopped 

 alfalfa was an ingredient, were chronically addicted to the habit of 

 acquiring the blue ribbon wherever exhibited. This fact became im- 

 pressed upon the minds of competing exhibitors, who began to call for the 

 kind of feed that contributed so largely to the prize-winning proclivities 

 of Mr. Weiss' fowls. Hand chopping and mixing of the feed soon be- 

 came inadequate and Mr. Weiss endeavored to secure machinery equip- 

 ment that would do the work on a larger scale, but was only partly 

 successful until he had equipment built in accordance with his own 

 ideas. 



He was soon putting out a special alfalfa feed, not only for poultry, 

 but for beef steers, for driving horses, for work horses and mules, and 

 for dairy use. From the small equipment, that at the start occupied 

 but a corner of his warehouse, the Otto Weiss plant at Wichita now 

 occupies a solid block of ground, while additional mills for the pro- 



