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Show DRY FARMING CROPS Most Popular for Forage of Sorghum Sor-ghum Tribe Is Amber Cane. 8fest Drought Resisting Plant and Does Well on 8od and Provides Heavy Yield of Good Fodder for Dairy Stock. After the corn 1b all planted, there fa still plenty of time to start cropa of cane, mllo maize, kafir corn or millet. The most popular of the sorghum tribe la amber cane, or plain cane, as they call it on the plains. It ia the safest drought resisting crop we have; some of my friends who have the drying out habit tell me it is the last thing to fire in a dry season, sea-son, writes E. R. Parsons, in Ranch and Range. It does well on sod, if well worked up, will grow on weak, sandy land where nothing else will, and provides a heavy yield of good fodder for dairy stock. It can be sown broadcast and cut like hay, making fine calf feed, but the most satisfactory way is to drill it in rows about three feet apart, planting plant-ing from ten to twenty pounds to the acre according to whether you wish the stalks thick or fine. It is relished better by stock when the stalks are fine, but some farmers prefer a heavy grain tassel which necessitates thinner thin-ner planting and a larger stalk. The grain is mostly starch, not any different in composition from corn, and is supposed to increase the yield of cream more than milk. When planted thickly and cut young, stock will consume stalk and all. Cultivation Cultiva-tion is a valuable aid to the making of a good crop, it will stand hard land and poorly plowed land much better than corn. It can be harrowed when small and planted any time before July, but we rather favor about the 20th of June. For a grain crop there la nothing like mllo maize in this line; it can be raised the same way as cane; it makes fine fodder with more grain than the former. Professor Cottrel calls our attention to the fact that thi3 grain is Just as good if not better than corn for chickens and hogs, also for stock feeding. The professor knows; for all these feed valuea are accurately accurate-ly tested and determined in the college col-lege laboratoriea. He recommends it unreservedly for the plains region. I have tested it on my ranch at 6,000 feet, but it does not grow as tall or make as much grain as it does In the plains east of Denver. Kafir corn i Is also a good forage plant, and can be raised on the plains by the same methods as cane, but the foothills are not hot enough to promote a heavy yield. There are several varieties of millet, mil-let, but the old German millet still seems the most popular. It can be planted even in the foothills country as late as the Fourth of July. We look on millet, however, more as a catch crop than anything else; if the rains come right it makes a good crop, otherwise not. It is easily damaged by hail. It makes a very rich forage for cows and must be fed sparingly and in conjunction with some other hay or fodder. It should not be planted too thickly, 25 pounds to the acre is about right on the dry farm, it can be harrowed when about two inches high. The right time to cut these crops is a matter of much dispute among farmers farm-ers and a table of feed value by an agricultural chemist showing the advantages ad-vantages of early or late harvesting is not always of much value to the farmer, farm-er, for the reason that it usually leaves out the most Important factor of all, that of digestibility. It matters little whether In ripening our crops develop, for instance, more sugar and less starch, for they are both the same thing carbo-hydrates fat-forming foods, but It matters mat-ters a great deal as the plants go on ripening when a portion of the starch becomes converted Into cellulose or plant-fiber, for although cellulose la isomeric iso-meric with starch and may appear in a table of food valuea as a carbo-hydrate, yet being utterly Indigestible It has no food value whatever. Sawdust, which might be termed dry cellulose, ia of almost the aame chemical compoaltion as corn chop, the carbon ia all there if we could only extract it In a digestible di-gestible form. The difference is not in compoaltion, but aimply in the transition of the atoms or lonp in the molecule. Farmera differ very much In their opinlona aa to when a crop of anything any-thing should be cut for feed. A man may wait a week or so to obtain a little lit-tle more protein in his alfalfa, a storm may come and ruin the whole crop, so that, after all, the weather is the principal thing to consider; but with late crops the weather makes less difference. Rye for hay ia usually usual-ly cut too late, if we try to get hay and grain from the same crop we get neither; the same may be said of corn plant either for corn, one in a hill, or for fodder, as many as you like, but don't expect to raise both in one crop. |