6 
PASTURING SHEEP ON ALFALFA. 
and her lamb. None were lost by bloat of either ewes or 
lambs. After the third crop of alfalfa was cut the ewes and 
lambs were turned on the stubble to eat the fourth crop. 
The lambs were taken up in the latter part of September to 
feed for market. They weighed then about 65 pounds per 
head. The ewes remained in the fields until late. The 
same ewes are being kept for a repetition of the*test in 1899 . 
PASTURING ALFALFA IN THE ARKANSAS 
VALLEY. 
More attempts have been made in the Arkansas valley 
to pasture sheep on alfalfa than in any other part of Colo¬ 
rado. Some years when the feed on the range has been 
poor quite a large number of sheep have been pastured part 
of the season on alfalfa, but during the summer of 1898 , the 
range grass was very abundant and nearly everybody turned 
the sheep and lambs on the range. The center of the sheep 
industry in the Arkansas valley is the counties of Otero, 
Bent and Prowers. Statements were obtained from those 
who had had the most experience in pasturing sheep on 
alfalfa and they are given herewith as showing what diverse 
results have been obtained and how various the opinions 
now held by those most familiar with the subject. 
W. E. DOYLE, Pueblo. 
We tried raising lambs on alfalfa pasture during the 
spring of 1898 and got along very well for the first two or 
three weeks while the pasture was short. But just as soon 
as the alfalfa got to growing faster than the sheep could eat 
it down close, they began to bloat, and before I gave it up I 
had lost about sixty head of fine Shropshire ewes and 
several lambs. I tried every precaution I knew of, such as 
not turning out until late in the morning, having them well 
filled with hay and grain, but it seemed to make no differ¬ 
ence. Some days there would be no losses ; then would 
come a day when a dozen would die after they had been 
grazing four or five hours. 
My opinion is that if one had a dog and coyote proof 
fence around the pasture and kept the sheep on night and 
day and kept the alfalfa picked down close until they got 
accustomed to it, the loss would not be so large. 
However, from what 1 have been able to learn from 
