GRASS AND HAY 67 



be supplemented with a small grain ration, as this will induce much 

 more rapid gains. The early growth of red clover is less nutritious 

 pound for pound than when nearng or at the blooming stage, since 

 in the early stages of growth it is high in moisture content, thus re- 

 quiring the animals to eat relatively larger quantities. Furthermore, 

 close early pasturing is injurious to the stand of clover. 



Bloating. When pasturing cattle or sheep on red clover, care 

 must be taken not to pasture when the animals are very hungry, 

 especially when the red clover is young and succulent or when wet 

 with dew or rain, as bloating may result. Should bloating occur, 

 several remedies are usually at hand which will afford material 

 relief. A large bit, the diameter of a pitchfork handle, may be tied 

 in the mouth ; a piece of rubber tubing may be passed through the 

 mouth to the first stomach ; or, as a last resort, the animal may be 

 tapped to allow the escape of gas. For this purpose a trocar, such 

 as is used by veterinary surgeons, is best; but in the absence of this, 

 a small-bladed knife may be used to make the incision about 6 

 inches in front of and slightly below the left hip bone. A straw or 

 quill may be used to permit the escape of gas. Care should be taken 

 not to allow the straw or quill to work down out of sight into the 

 incision. 



Red Clover as a Feed. All farm animals require protein in some 

 form in order to make their best growth or to produce the best results 

 either in the form of milk and butter, as in the case of dairy stock, 

 or as eggs, in the case of poultry. The ordinary roughage, such as 

 corn stover and ordinary grass hay, is low in the necessary protein. 

 On many farms this protein is supplied by feeding such concentrates 

 as bran, oil meal, or cottonseed meal ; but these concentrates are ex- 

 pensive and on most farms should be in large measure replaced by 

 a leguminous forage crop, such as red clover, which can be grown 

 on the place. ^ Red clover is one of the most highly nutritious forage 

 plants, either in the green state or cured as hay. 



Red Clover in Mixtures. For ordinary farm purposes it is very 

 often advantageous to seed red clover in a mixture with other clovers 

 and tame grasses. The root systems of different species are not the 

 same, and as a result, the soils of both the upper and lower layers 

 are more fully occupied than they would be by a stand of a single 

 crop. In case the stand is to be used for pasture, the mixture will 

 usually insure better succession of good pasturage than would the 

 use of any single crop; that is, by proper selection of the constit- 

 uents of the mixture it is possible to obtain a pasture which will 

 provide for early as well as late grazing and at the same time give 

 fair returns during the heated months of summer. Probably the 

 most common mixture is red clover and timothy. In the Ohio River 

 section and westward it is customary to seed the timothy with winter 

 wheat and follow this up the next spring with red clover on the 

 new stand of wheat when the ground is honeycombed by frosts. In 

 the spring- wheat section the timothy is seeded with the 'red clover 

 at the same time the wheat is sown. The timothy is longer lived 

 than the red clover, and as a result the proportion of timothy in the 



