CHAPTER XXV. 



CATTLE FOOD— THE GRASSES. 



The discussion of a subject so simple as proper food for cattle, 

 may be thought superfluous. In some localities, it would be so. 

 But when we have the power, in most cases, to measurably con- 

 trol both our summer and winter forage, it is worth attention. 



The most natural summer food for neat stock of all kinds, is 

 grass, and in winter, hay. We have grasses in great variety — 

 both natural, and cultivated. The natural grasses of all dry 

 lands, which hold a firm sod, north of 35° latitude, are such as 

 cattle like, and thrive on; and on some of the moister lands, not 

 absolutely swampy, they are also good. Our wild prairie lands, 

 of the Western States, yield several kinds of native grasses, and 

 some of them, when young, or in their prime, are of great excel- 

 lence, both in their fattening, and milk producing qualities. All 

 our cleared forest lands, of any fertility, produce a spontaneous 

 growth of pasture grasses, as the spear, or June grass, and white 

 clover, those being their usual production, and more or less inter- 

 mixed with occasional patches, when moist, of fowl-meadow, 

 and red-top. We call these natural grasses, because when the 

 land is free from the plow, whether their seeds be sown or not, 

 they naturally work in, and appear indigenous to the soil, what- 

 ever may be its geological formation. How the seed, to produce 

 them, gets there, is not now the question. At all events, the 

 grasses grow. They are our best pasture grasses, and can 

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