78 
The Coeorado Experiment Station. 
section of the State, and the rainfall is so light that ordinary forage 
plants do not furnish much forage, if they succeed in living. This 
saltbush grows abundantly some seasons and in some places, and 
the ranchmen have cut it, made it into hay and used it to feed their 
stock during severe storms when the cattle were unable to graze on 
the plains, and needed something to enable them to endure the 
storms which, I understand, are often severe, being accompanied 
by low temperatures and high winds. 
§182. I do not know'that anyone has observed the effects 
of this fodder under any conditions, favorable or otherwise, so that 
our observations and results will be of commercial interest to this 
section of the State whether they are favorable or not. Further, 
the saltbushes have not been studied, not even the Australian salt¬ 
bush, Atriplex semibaccata, which is a very different and, a^ a fod¬ 
der, I hope, a much more valuable plant than this. It has, at least, 
been recommended by the California Experiment Station and in a 
preliminary feeding experiment made by myself it promised to be 
a fair fodder even when fed alone. 
§183. I desired to study the composition, digestibility and 
feeding value of this class of plants, so this native saltbush which had 
already been used as a substitute for our better known forage plants, 
seemed to me to be a subject which would answer my purpose very 
well indeed, and might possibly be of considerable benefit to the 
State. I regret that my results do not justify any hope of adding a 
good forage plant in this indigenous saltbush. As a subject for 
the study of the questions discussed in this bulletin, however, it 
serves my purpose very well, for it proves to be a very poor fodder, 
one scarcely fit to be used under any circumstances and certainly 
not fit for use under conditions of stress and with cattle already re¬ 
duced in vitality by continued exposure and lack of a generous sup¬ 
ply of food. 
§184. This fodder probably contains nothing positively pois¬ 
onous or injurious, it is simply deficient as a fodder. One of the 
three sheep experimented with lost only one-half pound but another 
lost six pounds. We will later try to point out wherein it is de¬ 
ficient. None of the fodders studied serve better than this saltbush 
to make clear our principal object in this work, i. e., to discover, if 
possible, what causes the difference between fodders—why one is 
a good fodder and another a poor one—to discover some way of 
judging correctly whether a fodder is good or poor without having 
to feed it, but this is after all, a comparatively convenient, rational 
and conclusive method and the results obtained by it need no sum¬ 
ming up except as to cost. 
§185. The other fodders studied were corn fodder and sor¬ 
ghum fodder. The results obtained with these fodders, particularly 
