CACTUS FOR COWS 
They yielded from twenty to fifty tons of cattle feed to 
the acre. 
There remained only the problem of how it was to be 
used. Then someone thought of a novel scheme — that 
of using a blowpipe and burning the thorns off. This 
scheme was tried; it worked well. After the flame of the 
blowpipe was passed over the thorns of a plant, those 
thorns had disappeared. The cattle soon discovered the 
miracle and fell on the singed plants and devoured them. 
So was a way found for growing a new forage crop or 
at least for making use, in an emergency, of Nature’s crop 
in the Southwest. The prickly pear grows year after 
year. If it is needed, it can be singed and fed to cattle. 
If it is not needed, it remains green and keeps growing. 
If it is not used for ten years, none of its growth will be 
wasted. It is stored fodder, but it needs no barn. 
Finally the time of need comes. The ranchman goes 
out with his torch and burns the thorns off one row of 
prickly pears. That is the ration for his stock for the day. 
They may eat only that row; the reserve food supply they 
cannot touch. On the next day more thorns are singed. 
It is easier to give the stock, in this way, what food they 
are to have than it would be if they were being fed hay 
which must be pitched down from the stack and hauled 
out to them. The prickly pear, in fact, has certain ad¬ 
vantages over even red clover, as a food for cattle. 
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