Forage Crops For The Colorado Plains 
7 
good crop years to store up excess feed to tide him over the lean years 
which are bound to follow one season or another. 
The wide use of the silo is bound to come as a part of this develop¬ 
ment, because it permits all, or practically all, the feed grown to be 
stored in available succulent condition for future feeding. In IQ12 
the Experimental Sub-Station at Cheyenne Wells produced feed 
enough to have carried the herd on the land at that time for a period 
of two years. The silo capacity was limited to two pit silos at that 
time. They were filled to capacity, but they were only capable of 
carrying the herd thru the winter and the following early summer. In 
T913 by saving every bit of feed that it was possible to save and putting 
it into the silo, it was not possible to quite fill even these two silos. In 
]Oi4 two more silos were put down so that now we have capacity 
enough to carry the normal regular herd thru a period of two years 
if extreme conditions should appear. 
No method of dry curing of the crop is so efficient that it does 
not waste at least as much as thirty per cent. In the dry windy con¬ 
ditions which prevail as much as eighty per cent of the feed value may 
be lost. If put in the silo at least ninety per cent should be saved under 
normal conditions. In other words the loss need not be over ten per 
cent and often will be less than five per cent. The silo making possible 
this great saving in feed is bound to have a much greater use upon the 
dry farms. 
In many places dry farmers are making use of open range avail¬ 
able to carry their stock in the summer. During some seasons this 
open range will be cut short by extreme drouth so that the animals 
lose flesh or fall off in milk production according to the kind of 
animals kept. If the dry farmer had a silo at this time he could open 
the silo and feed some silage during the period of short pasture and 
keep up his gains on beef animals and his milk production on dairy 
animals. 
The entire system can be summarized then, briefly as follows: 
Forage crops are best adapted to the soil and climatic conditions. In 
the best management they should be grown and placed in the silo to 
be fed later to livestock. Grain farming should be entirely supple- 
Ti'ientary to the general syste m. Of the grain cash crops which may 
be grown, we have winter v'dieat. flax and Mexican beans. With 
winter wheat and flax especially, the farmer should look upon the prop¬ 
osition as a chance for getting something extra, his living and his 
main returns to be obtained from livestock which are fed upon forage 
crops. 
AI.FALFA 
Farmers, experimcnt-^rs anrl others have long recognized the n'^ed 
of a reliable legume crop that would supply forage for the dry farming 
sections of the plams. Alf'^K'' was tried and pronounced a failure by 
most of the persons who tried it. The fault was not entirely that of 
the alfalfa. In attempting to produce alfalfa, planting was done in 
