This item is from the Harper, Kansas, _Sentinel_: A subscriber tells us that the mites and chicken lice were completely driven out of his barn and hen house, as soon as he had alfalfa hay put in his barn and used it in the house for nests. He says that before the hay was cut, it was impossible to keep a horse in the barn or to have a hen hatch a nest of eggs, but neither mites nor lice can be found now. This is a new use for alfalfa, but if it does the work, it will be lots cheaper than buying poisonous decoctions and spraying pumps to get rid of lice and mites, the greatest pests to poultry raisers. _CHAPTER XVIII._ Alfalfa Food Preparation The growing appreciation of alfalfa as a stock and dairy food and the expense of baling and shipping it as hay, the loss of leaves, and the liability to heat and mold unless well cured, have led to the manufacture from it of several food preparations. These in some cases are made by simply grinding into a meal, and in others by mixing the meal with molasses, or a variety of food products, and assumed condiments and appetizers. The Colorado station in a feeding test concluded that the ground alfalfa was not an economical feed for fattening pigs. With cut alfalfa hay costing $8 a ton and ground alfalfa $16 a ton the cost of producing one hundred pounds of gain with the former was $2.62 and with the alfalfa meal $3.12. With corn and cut alfalfa hay fed in equal parts by weight the cost of producing one hundred pounds of gain was $2.72. With corn and alfalfa meal fed in equal parts by weight the cost was $3.96. It is not improbable, however, that better results would have been obtained if a less proportion of ground or cut alfalfa had been fed. It is also probable that the hog’s grinding machinery is better adapted to his digestive apparatus than is any other. PROFESSOR COTTRELL ON ALFALFA MEAL It is worth while, however, to consider the arguments in favor of grinding alfalfa. Prof. H. M. Cottrell says: “Grinding alfalfa increases its digestibility. How much has not been determined. Grinding increases the digestibility of corn and oats as much as 14 per cent, and of wheat 10 per cent. It is probable that there is a greater gain in digestibility from grinding alfalfa, a coarse feed, than there is from grinding grain. “When alfalfa is to be fed at a distance from the place where grown it must be baled for shipping. When the bales are opened and scattered in feeding a considerable part of the leaves is wasted. Over 8 per cent of the protein in alfalfa is found in the leaves, and the loss of protein from leaves wasted in feeding baled hay is frequently from one-fourth to one-half of the total amount in the original hay. With ground alfalfa there is no waste in feeding either from leaf or stem. Alfalfa ground is in the best condition for shipping and handling cheaply and without waste.