Show USE OF CACTI SAVES STOCK In Times of Drought the Spineless Variety Va-riety Proves an Excellent Forage for Cattle By E O Wooton Botanist of New Mex Ito t Experiment Btntlon After nil that has been written concerning con-cerning spineless cactus as a forago plant It would scorn somewhat superfluous su-perfluous to call the attention of stockmen stock-men to tho value of the cacti upon their ranges during tho dry season of tho year But the mental step between spiny cacti and spineless ones seem to lie a long ono and one that few take readily I quote from a bulletin by the bureau bu-reau of plant Industry Tho Prickly Pear and Other Cacti as a Food for Stock by Dr David Griffiths Prickly Prick-ly pear although poor in nutritive quality can bo fed to decided advantage advan-tage under several conditions and for oeral purposes 1 To save cattle during prolonged drought when other more nutritive food Is scarce Now this statement applies to any hid of cactus that Is big enough to furnish any quantity of forage being specially true of the prickly pears and cane cacti The truth of this statement Is vouched for by many who have tried It This Is by no means the only use for cacti but at tho season of the year when all feed Is dry and there Is very little of It when the water supply Is poorest It would seem to be a most important ono This article Is written to call the attention of those stockmen who have already availed themselves of tho supply sup-ply and more especially those who are losing stock to the fact that they probably have upon their ranges a forgo for-go which may be available to their stock by a little work Spineless cacti will not grow In the open range In fact their thorns and spines together are one of tho characters that make it Impossible for cacti of any kind to live on the open ranges And even this defensive armor is Insufficient to protect them from a number of enemies But tho spines do protect them from stock and before be-fore they can be made into stock food the spine must be destroyed Fortunately the spines burn readily hence Is Is possible to singe them off without affecting the stems and so come at tho forage Two ways of burning spines have been shown to be practicable Ono Iso Is-o cut the stalks with a machete or a sharp spado and hold them in the blaze of a brush fire with a pitch i fork The other is to singe them on he plants as they stand with a gaso line torch specially mado for the work This torch is mono on the principle of an ordinary plumbers torch with a rather long pipe for the reservoir and one that may bo turned In different directions di-rections Gasoline is a fuel and is used under pressure and mixed with air so it Is very essential that all joints be gastight and bo kept free of gasoline otherwise serious explosions explo-sions may occur The torch method is much the more rapid and less laborious Experience has shown that It is well to have a good pressure in tho tank and avoid using the torch in the wind as much as possible since this materially increases in-creases the amount of singeing Considering the fact that we have a perIod of stortago of feed and water each year In the spring and early summer sum-mer and periodic occurrences of years that are drier than usual at that time It would seem but a sensible thing for stockmen to encourage the growth of cacti upon those parts of their ranges where grass and better forage do not grow well this is to bo done with tho idea of preparing for the lean year The easy way of planting cacti Is to scatter the separate Joints over tho ground They will take root without covering The work may bo done at any season of the year though a larger per cent of tho Joints will root during the rainy season This statement state-ment applies to tho lowVr and hotter southern end of the territory |