I. PASTURING SHEEP ON ALFALFA. 
BY W. W. COOKE. 
The high price of sheep and lambs during the years 
since 1896 has turned the attention of sheep feeders to the 
question of raising the lambs they feed, in place of depend¬ 
ing on the ranges of the south and west. The summer feed 
for the sheep, where there is no range, is the most difficult 
problem attending the raising of sheep on the ranches. It 
has been generally recognized that if it was as safe to 
pasture sheep on alfalfa as it is to let horses run on the same 
feed, there would be but little difficulty in raising lambs on 
any of the farms of the irrigated districts of Colorado. Many 
have tried pasturing sheep and lambs on alfalfa, but so many 
sheep have been lost by bloat that most herders have 
dropped the practice and others have been deterred from 
attempting it. 
The high price of sheep has again awakened interest in 
the subject and led to the following experiments and investi¬ 
gation: 
In the early fall of 1897 we bought eleven ewes for the 
purpose of making a double test, i. e ., the raising of early 
iambs and the pasturing of these lambs and the ewes on 
alfalfa during the summer of 1898 . The ewes were mixed 
Shropshire and Merino, weighing about ninety pounds 
apiece. They were old ewes that had still fairly good teeth, 
but were so old that it was expected that the 1898 lamb 
would be the last one raised. They reached the college 
farm October 29 , 1897 , and were bred as soon as possible to 
the fine registered Shropshire ram Bennett's Prince, No. 
87674 , that stands at the head of the college flock. The 
eleven ewes dropped eleven lambs, most of them within a 
week after March 4 , 1898 . Through the winter the ewes 
were fed alfalfa hay. They received a small amount of en¬ 
silage during part of the winter, but in figuring on the finan- 
