The best results, relatively, from growing alfalfa to provide pasture
will be found in the Western valleys, where alfalfa grows with much
vigor, and in certain areas of the South, where it grows freely and can
be pastured during much of the year. In areas eminently adapted to the
growth of clover, it is not so necessary to grow alfalfa for such a use.
In Western areas, where Canada field peas are a success, and especially
where artichokes are not hidden from swine by frost, pork can be grown
very cheaply, and without the necessity of harvesting any very large
portion of these crops, except through grazing them down by swine.
Such conditions would be highly favorable to the maintenance of health
in the swine, and the quality of the pork made would be of the best. In
some instances a small stack of Canada field peas is put up in the swine
pasture that the swine may help themselves from the same the following
year, as in rainless or nearly rainless climates, where such grain will
keep long without injury.
Alfalfa furnishes excellent grazing for horses, more especially when
they are not at work. Like other succulent pastures, it tends too much
to induce laxness in the bowels with horses which graze it, without any
dry fodder supplement. But it has high adaptation for providing pasture
for brood mares, colts, and horses that are idle or working but little.
While it induces abundant milk production in brood mares, and induces
quick and large growth in colts until matured, it is thought by some
practical horsemen that horses grown chiefly on alfalfa have not the
staying power and endurance of those, for instance, that are grazed
chiefly on Kentucky blue grass and some other grasses. There is probably
some truth in the surmise, and if so, the objection raised could be met
by dividing the grazing either through alternating the same with other
pastures or by growing some other grass or grasses along with the
alfalfa.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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