IRRIGATED FIELD CROPS FOR HOG PASTURING. 
alfalfa crop vary so widely from year to year in different fields and in 
different parts of the country that only an approximation can be made 
of the productivity of alfalfa fields in irrigated sections. In 1916, 
the average yield of alfalfa hay on 381,323 acres harvested on all the 
Government reclamation projects was 3.2 tons per acre, according 
to reports made by the United States Reclamation Service. This 
acreage included newly-seeded land as well as land on which good 
stands of alfalfa had become established. Ordinarily, only established 
stands are used as pasture for hogs. The yields of the pastured fields, 
therefore, are somewhat greater than the average for the entire 
alfalfa acreage. An approximation of the productivity of the 
alfalfa lands used as hog pasture in the experiments reported in this 
bulletin is given in Table I, which shows average yields of alfalfa 
at five Western Irrigation Agriculture field stations. 
Table I. — Average yields of alfalfa hay at five Western Irrigation Agriculture 
field stations. 
Station. 
Years. 
Yield 
per 
acre 
(tons). 
Remarks. 
Yuma (Arizona-California). . . 
Truckec-Carson (Nevada) 
ScottsblufT ( Nebraska) 
Huntley ( Montana) 
Belle Fourche (South Dakota) 
1916 
1916 
1913 
1916 
1913 
1916 
1913 
1916 
} 5.42 
} ,n 
\ 3.73 
Estimated yield of field used for hog pasture. 
Average yield of 49 plats on good and poor soil. 
f4-year average yield of 15 plats with established stands 
\ in field K. 
/4-vear average yield of 9 plats with established stands 
\ in field K. 
/4-vear average yield of 10 plats with established stands 
\ 'in field A. 
It will be noted from Table I that the yields of established stands 
of alfalfa at the Yuma, Scottsbluff, and Huntle} 7 field stations aver- 
age 5 tons or more per acre, while those at the Truckee- Carson and 
Belle Fourche stations are somewhat lower than this. These figures 
are useful only as a general indication of the productivity of the 
alfalfa fields used as hog pasture at these stations in trie experiments 
reported in this paper. 
The principal supplementary feeds are, of course, the cereals. 
The cereal crops — barley, corn, oats, rye, and wheat — are grown on 
most irrigation projects, but in varying degrees of importance. In 
1916 these crops occupied 26.1 per cent of the cropped acreage on the 
Government reclamation projects, while alfalfa occupied 44.5 per 
cent of the cropped acreage the same year. Grain sorghums are 
grown extensively in the Southwest where they are used both as a 
principal feed for hogs and as a supplement to alfalfa pasture. Rye 
is not grown extensively for its grain under irrigation. A general 
idea of the yields obtained of the four principal cereal crops grown 
throughout the irrigated regions of the western United States can 
