186 Feeds and Feeding. 



concentrates and materially reduce the cost of the ration. (665) 

 For sheep, calves, and young stock generally, clover or other legume 

 hay is all-important, (501, 764) Chaffed clover hay, or, better, the 

 leaves and finer parts which shatter from it, when softened with 

 water and mixed with their slop, serve a useful purpose with swine, 

 especially breeding stock. (902) 



Clover pasture is helpful and important for all farm animals. 

 For pigs it furnishes about sufficient food for maintenance, so that 

 all the grain fed goes for gain. Clover-pastured pigs are healthy 

 and have good bone and constitution — points of special importance 

 with breeding stock. (899) To forestall bloat or hoven, cattle and 

 sheep should not be turned on clover pasture for the first time 

 while hungry or before the dew has risen. As a preventative, dry 

 forage, such as hay or straw, should be placed in feed racks in the 

 pasture. To these cattle and sheep will resort instinctively when 

 bloat threatens. 



Clover is particularly valuable for soilage, ranking next to alfalfa 

 among the legumes available for that purpose. By cutting clover 

 early, it at once starts growth again if the weather is favorable, 

 and will furnish three or four cuttings annually. In a few cases 

 clover has made fair silage, but so many failures have occurred 

 that this plant cannot be recommended for such purpose except 

 where weather conditions prevent its being properly cured into hay. 



III. Other Clovers and Leguminous Forage Plants. 



255. Mammoth clover, Trifolium medium. — The distinctive char- 

 acteristics of mammoth clover are its rank growth, coarse stems, and 

 blooming two or three weeks later than the medium variety. 

 Since it yields but one cutting during the season, this clover is fre- 

 quently pastured for several weeks in the early spring. After 

 the stock is removed the plants shoot up and are soon ready for the 

 mower. Wallace^ recommends that for pasture medium and mam- 

 moth clover seed be sown in equal proportions, togetlier with grasses, 

 holding that since the mammoth variety blooms later there is more 

 nearly a succession of good forage than is possible with only one 

 variety. 



256. Alsike clover, Trifolium hyhridum. — This variety of clover 

 has weak stems which fall to the ground unless supported by attend- 

 ant grasses. Well-made alsike hay ranks with the best, tho the 



^ Clover Culture. 



