236 IRRIGATION FARMING. 



lizing compounds. "NVlion alfalfa is grown and its prod- 

 ucts are properly utilized upon the farm, it cannot be 

 considered an exhaustive crop, but rather as one fulfilling 

 the proper aim of rational agriculture, which is to trans- 

 form into produce the raw materials at our disposal in 

 the atmosphere and soil. It has been estimated that the 

 market value of an acre of turned-under green alfalfa is 

 all the way from fifty dollars to eighty dollars, and the 

 experiments along this line have been very carefully 

 made by scientific gentlemen. 



Feeding Value. Alfalfa hay is forty-five per cent 

 better than clover, and sixty per cent better than tim- 

 othy. To secure a good milk ration by the use of tim- 

 othy hay, protein must be supplied from some other 

 source, in order to secure a ration that will give a suffi- 

 cient amount of that material without entailing a loss of 

 carbohydrates" and fat ; clover hay, however, is a fairly 

 good ration in itself, and can be economically used with- 

 out the addition of any other compounds ; alfalfa hay, 

 on the other hand, requires the addition of large amounts 

 of both fat and carbohydrates in order to be profitably 

 utilized as a milk ration. This fact renders alfalfa more 

 serviceable than its valuation would indicate, since, in 

 the management of farms either for dairy purposes or 

 for grain farming, an excess of carboh yd rates is secim-t"!. 

 which in the great majority of cases is wasted. Under 

 ordinary conditions two and a half pounds of protein, 

 four-tenths of a pound of fat, and twelve and a half 

 pounds of carbohydrates can be profitably fed daily to a 

 cow of one thousand pounds live weight. One ton of 

 alfalfa hay, containing 35.3 pounds of digestible fat, 

 280.1 pounds of digestible protein, and 770.7 pounds of 

 digestible carbohydrates would furnish sufficient protein 

 for one hundred and twelve days, fat for eighty-eiiiht 

 days, and carbohydrates for sixty-one. Therefore, in 

 order to feed this amount of alfalfa economically and 



