136 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



Bluegrass is the pasture commonly used and realizing 

 that it was not productive, we desired to get some data 

 upon this point and so conducted a pasture experiment at 

 the University of Illinois in which was determined the 

 actual amount of digestible feed which the bluegrass pro- 

 duced during each of four consecutive years. The results 

 showed that, as a pasture, bluegrass was fully as non- 

 productive as we had surmised, if not more so, because it 

 actually produced only about one-seventh as much feed 

 per year as the same area of corn and alfalfa would pro- 

 duce, and only about one-half as much as oats, and one- 

 fourth as much as clover. 



The first year there was a fairly regular yield but it 

 would have required four acres of bluegrass pasture per 

 cow to supply sufficient feed for good cows. The third 

 year, after June 1, 91/2 acres per cow would have been 

 required. 



Bluegrass Worthless for Long Periods 



The second year and the fourth year there were pe- 

 riods of three and a half to four months when bluegrass 

 pasture was worthless as feed — 30 or more acres per cow 

 affording barely sufficient feed. Now it is easily seen that 

 when pasture is this poor, it ceases to be a pasture and 

 becomes merely an exercising ground because to maintain 

 her milk flow when 30 acres are required, a cow would 

 have to be endowed with certain characteristics as yet un- 

 known in the dairy breeds. Granting her a muzzle 18 

 inches wide, she would have to walk 24 miles a day, crop- 

 ping the grass clean as she went like a lawn-mower run 

 with a gas engine, in order to get her full feed, thus re- 

 quiring not only a new departure in facial anatomy, but 

 phenomenal speed and endurance in addition. Absurd as 

 may be the mental picture of such a gaunt, broad-visaged 

 animal, zealously forging ahead to cover her mileage of 

 bare pasture during the daylight hours, one should not let 

 his hilarity dull the point of the fact that she is just the 

 ideal type of cow for our bluegrass pastures in the Middle 

 West where summer droughts are so frequent and severe. 



