CHAPTER V 

 MEADOWS AND PASTURES 



SUCCESS in the profitable rearing of herbivorous animals 

 is nearly always conditioned on good grass. This applies 

 almost as truly to the most specialized forms of animal 

 husbandry as to the primitive wandering herdsman. The 

 highest type of agriculture is in those regions where grass 

 culture is most developed. Meadows usually supply the 

 most economical feed that can be preserved. Pastures, 

 whether temporary or permanent, furnish the cheapest 

 means for maintaining farm animals that can be grown, 

 and permit the utilization of land too poor or too rough to 

 use for other farm crops. 



82. Meadow mixtures. The practice of growing 

 mixtures of grasses or legumes or both, is an old one 

 antedating in agriculture the sowing of pure cultures. 

 Originally grass seeds were gathered from mixed meadows, 

 and hence pure sowings could not be made. In oriental 

 countries, especially India, where labor is very cheap, 

 all sorts of crops are still grown in mixtures, and the belief 

 prevails generally that a larger total return is thus secured. 

 The cost of harvesting each separately is so great that such 

 mixed plantings are seldom made in Europe or America, 

 and only where all of the plants in the mixture can be 

 harvested at the same time, or where the harvesting of 

 the one does not interfere with the further development 

 of the other. 



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