40 FORAGE CONDITIONS AND PROBLEMS. 
Several of these communities are developing the dairy industry 
quite rapidly, and already Camas Prairie butter is of some importance 
in the local markets. The necessity of good pastures and hay crops 
for the proper development of this industry is obvious. 
While much has been done by the Department of Agriculture and 
the State experiment stations in the development of the forage 
resources of the West, very little attention has been given in this 
country to experiments in this line in the mountains. The peculiar 
conditions existing in these mountain settlements render the necessity 
for new hay and pasture plants particularly pressing. In many local- 
ities the ranchers and farmers are already experimenting on their own 
account and will determine in time, by a laborious and expensive 
process, what could very properly be determined at public expense. 
The difficulties encountered by these farmers are enhanced by the 
practice, common with certain seedsmen, of foisting upon the farmer, 
under a new and frequently high-sounding name, some worthless 
weed, or some plant of very limited usefulness. To illustrate: Some 
people have invested considerable money in the seed of a supposedly 
new forage crop under the name of ** Billion-dollar grass,” and were 
surprised when they were informed that it was an annual grass, and 
much chagrined when they got no results on dry land without irriga- 
tion, or when with irrigation on rich alluvial deposits they secured 
only a scattering growth of the common barnyard erass—a common 
weed all over the United States. 
As stated elsewhere, grain, hay, and cheat are the main hay crops 
in these mountain settlements at present. These certainly can be 
improved upon. Some timothy and redtop are grown, and awunless 
brome is being gradually introduced. It appears to the writer that 
some work of an experimental nature would be very desirable in these 
mountain communities. A series of experiments conducted here for 
about three years with a carefully-selected list of about fifty forage 
plants would demonstrate what forage crops could be grown to advan- 
tage at these high altitudes and would be of inestimable benefit to the 
pioneers who are building homes here. 
In the numerous desert basins where water available for irrigation 
ean be secured for only a short period, or, in other words, ee the 
meadows can be irrigated in late winter only and where now the sedges 
and rushes are the main hay crops, the need of a perennial hay plant 
that will mature early is evident. The native plant, bunch bluegrass 
(Poa levigata), seems the most promising for this purpose. As previ- 
ously stated, this furnishes much hay at the present time and appears 
welladapted to this form of treatment. The characteristics which make 
this a valuable grass are discussed elsewhere and need not be repeated 
here. It is possible that some annual crops might be found to be 
profitable here, but it must be considered that the returns per acre, 
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