Alfalfa in Kansas. 443 



not tell you just the proportions of each ingredient contained in the ration 

 fed, since he conducts his own experiment station and varies the mixture 

 according to weather conditions, the quality of the hogs and the growth 

 they are making. But the important thing is that he obtained the desired 

 balance to the ration by increasing or decreasing the quantity of alfalfa 

 meal used. It was two or three years ago that the writer met this gentle- 

 man, and at that time the average weight of the hogs arriving on the 

 Wichita market was around 225 pounds, as corn was scarce and high in 

 price. Admittedly many other feeders might have taken lessons from 

 this Marion county farmer, who habitually topped the market with hogs 

 weighing a hundred pounds more. It seems safe to credit alfalfa meal 

 with at least a portion of the gain. 



Otto Weiss maintains that two bushels of corn and one bushel of al- 

 falfa meal exceed three bushels of corn in feeding value. The price of the 

 meal, he says, should never fall below that of corn, pound for pound. The 

 alfalfa meal causes the nutritive elements of the corn to be fully assimi- 

 lated by the animal to which the mixture is fed. Experiments conducted 

 at the feed yards of the M. C. Peters Mill Company proved that hogs 

 following cattle that were fed on a well-balanced alfalfa meal and grain 

 ration would starve, so completely was the feed assimilated by the larger 

 animals. 



One of the largest concerns that feed cattle in Nebraska has found it 

 possible to shorten the feeding period from six or eight months to three or 

 four months merely by incorporating alfalfa meal in the ration fed. An- 

 other enthusiastic exponent of the igoodness of alfalfa meal claims that 

 1200 pounds of the meal put more meat on a bunch of steers than a ton of 

 alfalfa hay. Dairymen have found alfalfa meal a wonderful stimulant 

 to milk production, some reporting a gain of one-third by actual test. 



One of the finest bunches of sheep that ever arrived at the Kansas 

 City stockyards was fattened exclusively on alfalfa meal in two-thirds 

 of the time ordinarily required where grain is fed. 



It would appear by no means an established fact that the grower of 

 alfalfa can reap no advantage from grinding the alfalfa he feeds to his 

 own animals. The Colorado Experiment Station states, in Bulletin No. 

 187, that four years of experimenting seems to have established that it 

 will pay the feeder to reduce his common quality of alfalfa hay to meal, 

 provided the cost of the meal, delivered at the farm, is not more than 

 one dollar per ton in excess of the value of the hay, where the meal is 

 coarsely milled, or three to four dollars where it is finely floured. It 

 does not encourage the milling of top-quality hay, but says the alfalfa 

 grinder has a legitimate place on the farm and enables the farmer to 

 make a better clean-up and secure a much closer consumption of coarse, 

 poor-quality alfalfa hay, stack tops and bottoms, straw, and other fodder. 

 Anticipating the need for just such a grinder on the farm, a manu- 

 facturing concern located at Wichita, Kan., has placed on the market a 

 small, light-running, all-purpose mill that has caused many users to see 

 new possibilities in feeding-stuffs economy as practiced on the farm, as 

 this machine grinds with equal facility alfalfa hay, kafir heads, ear or 



