PASTURING SHEEP ON ALFALFA. 
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those who have had more experience than myself, they 
suffer from 15 to 25 per cent, loss, which at the present high 
price of ewes is rather expensive. 
WM.and H. G. GREENE, OIney. 
Our late lambs began to come about the tenth of April, 
and both in 1897 1898 we lambed them on alfalfa. 
We put the ewes on the alfalfa before it started and kept 
them there until we were through lambing. We yarded 
them at night. Until the alfalfa got well grown we fed them 
hay. When feed began to get plenty, they would bloat 
more or less, but we never lost a sheep. 
The first season after the lambs were a few days old we 
tried returning the ewes to the alfalfa. But we could not 
make it work. The ewes would bloat and die, if they were 
only on for a short time, even fifteen to twenty minutes. 
Last year we did not try to return the ewes to the alfalfa 
after they came in, but took them to the prairie which was 
good feed. By running the dropping band on alfalfa, the 
ewes have plenty of milk and are in good condition. We 
expect to run the dropping band in 1899 the same way. We 
have fine lambs and expect to get nearly one hundred per 
cent, increase. We have tried other ways of running sheep 
on alfalfa but cannot make a success of it. 
D. C. ROBERTS, Ordway. 
My experience in pasturing alfalfa with sheep is on 
rather a small scale. Among my sheep that I was fatten- 
ing during the spring of 1898, were eight ewes that dropped 
lambs in April — fifteen lambs from the eight ewes — while 
on dry feed in the corral. When I sold my sheep in May, 
these ewes and lambs were turned loose in the alfalfa fields, 
twenty-three head in all. They roamed over the farm at 
their own will, seldom coming near the barn. In September 
I put them in the corral again and found there were twenty- 
three head still. On September 10, several of the larger 
lambs weighed 80 to 90 pounds. They were on the green 
alfalfa through wet and dry and apparently never bloated. 
S. McCARTA, Manzanola. 
In October 1896, I bought my first bunch of sheep. I 
