LXXXI 
CACTUS FOR COWS 
I SN’T IT ODD that man has found a way to make use 
of even so forbidding a child of Nature as the prickly 
pear of the West! 
That great stretch of desert country that reaches from 
San Antonio to Los Angeles favors the prickly pear above 
all plants. With its skin sealed airtight on the outside, it 
can hold its moisture, as few others can, and remain green 
and vigorous with little water. With its needle-sharp 
thorns it scorns attack from browsing cattle or even the 
nibbling jack rabbit. It survives where most forms of life 
perish. 
Cattlemen through the decades have seen their herds 
die of starvation, while beneath the thorn covering of the 
prickly pear was much nourishing food. It remained for 
men of science, sent into these parts by the Department 
of Agriculture, to work out a plan for utilizing the stock 
feed that lay well fortified in this plant. 
First they tried growing it under cultivation. This 
plant, which got along quite well where few others would 
live, grew to surprising size when the ground was plowed 
and water was allowed to enter the soil when the few 
rains of the year came. Cultivated prickly pears grew 
ten times as fast as those that were not cultivated. 
The crop was planted somewhat as sugar cane is — by 
laying the joints in a furrow. These joints took root and 
grew. They went right on growing summer and winter. 
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