400 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 
troughs. Colorado lambs usually top the Chicago 
and Omaha markets. The excellence of their mut- 
ton is very great. Alfalfa does it, with a proper 
amount of corn. 
After the sheep are fed there is left a tremendous 
amount of manure. Once this was allowed to go to 
waste. Recently it has been found profitable to haul 
it to the fields. In western Nebraska it is often put 
on the old alfalfa meadows, where it has been found 
very beneficial. 
Small Waste in Feeding—There is no especial 
care necessary in feeding sheep or lambs on alfalfa 
hay. When hard frosts late in the season catch the 
alfalfa it is sometimes injurious to sheep after being 
made into hay. Ordinarily no harm ever comes to 
a sheep from having as much alfalfa as it can eat. 
It has been learned, however, that sheep may eat 
their hay up nearly clean, rejecting only the most 
woody portion, and thrive nearly as well as though 
wasting all but the finer stems and leaves. Less 
waste is found where the animals can thrust their 
heads clear into the racks, or through the fences, to 
reach the hay than when they must pull it through 
narrow cracks in the rack. The writer makes his 
alfalfa feeding racks with vertical, slits 7” wide. 
Through these sheep thrust their heads and keep 
them there while eating. 
It is not true economy with fattening sheep or 
lambs to require them to eat their hay too close; 
setter gains are had when they consume large 
