The Book of Alfalfa: History, Cultivation and Merits: Its Uses as a Forage and FertilizerCoburn, F. D. (Foster Dwight)
History
The Book of Alfalfa: History, Cultivation and Merits: Its Uses as a Forage and Fertilizer
Coburn, F. D. (Foster Dwight)
Alfalfa
The most enthusiastic advocates of alfalfa are dairymen. The market
price of milk is quite well fixed and the price of butterfat at the
creameries remains, in the different seasons, pretty much the same year
by year. Hence, the problem of increasing his financial returns must
depend upon the dairyman’s being able to increase the volume of his
product or to decrease the cost, or both. If he is selling butterfat at
a profit of five cents and he cannot force the price any higher, it is
the sensible thing to decrease the cost per pound and thereby enlarge
his profit.
The dairyman who buys all his feed has but little margin. To raise
enough clover calls for considerable land. Alfalfa will yield a large
bulk of excellent feed from a few acres of well treated land. For profit
he must raise more feedstuff and buy less. The Kansas station reported
that with common scrub cows fed on alfalfa hay and Kafir corn meal it
was possible to produce butterfat at a cost of seven cents a pound.
SOME MILKING TEST VALUATIONS
The New Jersey station as a result of a very painstaking milking test
reported: (1) In a ration where alfalfa hay was tested against wheat
bran and dried brewers’ grain the saving in the cost of milk was 12.7
cents per hundred, and 2.3 cents per pound of butter when alfalfa hay
was used. This saving means a great deal when it is considered that the
alfalfa is raised and not purchased. (2) That the milk value of one acre
of alfalfa was $74.
A Kansas dairyman is reported to have kept ten cows through one summer
on the alfalfa cut daily from a patch containing four square rods less
than two acres.
Some dairymen believe that there is a great saving in the alfalfa hay by
cutting it into two-inch lengths, and feeding it dry. It is also
believed that it will always be a matter of economy to feed with the
alfalfa, green or as hay, a small ration of carbonaceous food, even
corn-stover serving such a purpose.
Former Governor Hoard, editor of _Hoard’s Dairyman_, says that with
alfalfa hay at $10 and bran at $20 per ton there is a saving, by using
alfalfa, of $2.80 for every 100 pounds of butter made, and a saving of
19.8 cents for every 100 pounds of milk.
In a section of New York where alfalfa has been quite generally
introduced, dairymen claim an increase in their profits of 15 to 30 per
cent by its use, besides the enrichment of their farms for other crops.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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