6 
COLORADO EXPERIMENT STATION 
Akron, Colorado, will be glad to furnish any information they or their 
associates may have and should be consulted often. Reliable books 
on Dry Land Farming should be thoroughly studied. 
Every advantage should be taken of natural conditions. Draws 
and the lower areas of high uplands can be prepared for garden, fruit 
trees or alfalfa. Often many acres can be watered from higher 
prairie lands by running furrows through the sod to catch the storm 
water as it runs off. It is well to look for such opportunities when 
selecting a farm. It takes several years to get prairie sod in good 
condition, but with thorough tillage the tilth and the water-holding 
capacity increase each year. 
i 
THE SYSTEM OE FARMING TO FOLLOW. 
Exclusive grain growing in dry land farming has been a failure 
wherever tried during the past thirty years in Kansas, Nebraska, 
Minnesota, the Dakotas and Colorado. Yet most of the settlers on 
the dry lands of eastern Colorado, in the past three years, came with 
the idea of growing grain only. Many have boasted that they did 
not even keep a cow for milk. 
Hundreds of these grain growers have failed, lost their home¬ 
steads and what money they brought with them, and have had to 
leave the state, sometimes with the help of eastern friends. They 
made the inevitable failure which was certain to come from their dis¬ 
regard of the experiences of tens of thousands of farmers who had 
worked under similar conditions. This makes the third time that 
eastern Colorado has been settled and then almost depopulated. 
To many new settlers who are starting in dry land farming on 
the plains of eastern Colorado, dairying and poultry raising offer a 
sure income. In the past thirty-four years there have been but few 
years so dry but that a sufficient quantity of feed could have been 
raised together with the native grasses to produce a good yield of 
milk. 
Dairying and poultry raising are the profitable lines to follow in 
dry land farming where the settler’s capital is limited, as both give 
quick and regular cash incomes. 
The average annual rainfall on the Colorado Plains varies in 
different localities from 13 to 19 inches, adequate with good methods, 
to produce a profitable crop of wheat. In about half the years the 
rainfall is below these averages, and has dropped as low as 6.93 inches 
in 12 months, in one section, and in other places to as low as 7.11 to 
10.74 inches. 
In years of low rainfall, the moisture is not sufficient to produce 
crops of grain, but there is usually enough for fair yields of forage 
crops, such as milo maize, sorghum, kafir corn, corn fodder and hay 
from wheat, oats and barley. These forage crops are not marketable, 
but become money makers when fed to dairy cows and hens. 
Dairy cows and hens, properly selected and handled, will furnish 
