ALFALFA FOR HORSES AND MULES 1 69 



where an excess means work for the kidneys to carry It 

 off. We can founder a horse more easily on wheat than 

 on corn for this very reason. Alfalfa has a nutritive 

 ratio of practically i to 4. An ordinary 1000-pound 

 horse, if given all it will eat of it, will eat from thirty to 

 forty pounds in twenty- four hours. As the alfalfa con- 

 tains about II per cent of easily digested proteins, you 

 will readily see that the horse would be taking into his 

 system nearly four and one-half pounds of protein. 



''About two and one-half pounds of digestible protein 

 is all that an ordinary horse or cow of a thousand pounds 

 weight, when at work or in milk, can utilize. In the 

 alfalfa hay we have nearly twice as much as is needed. 

 If it were not for some of it being physicked off, we 

 would soon have an animal with overworked kidneys or 

 muscular stiffness of a rheumatic nature. In case of a 

 mare in foal, when fed on alfalfa and nothing else, the 

 chances are she would drop her colt prematurely, or if 

 it went full time, the colt would be a nice, fat, little, plump 

 fellow, with little vitality and with a tendency to rickets 

 or bowel disease, all because the alfalfa was too narrow 

 a ration. 



"Now if we fed this mare alfalfa hay once a day or 

 even twice a day, in moderate quantities, say fifteen 

 pounds, and gave her one feed of straw or timothy hay or 

 corn fodder, which are carbonaceous foods, with a quart 

 of oats a day to impart a little nerve force, we would have 

 her practically on right lines. Alfalfa, good as it is, is 

 not an all-sufficient food for any animal. The danger lies 

 in sections where it is being thrown to the animals relish- 

 ing it so well and the owner having it in such abundance 



