| Show sheep do well on alfalfa pastures Experiments result in acreage of the popular crop being doubled by W G kammlade xam m lade assistant chief in she sheep husbandry h d college ot of agrical ture lure un of 11 I 1 inola service alfalfa to which illinois farmers are turning as a substitute for corn and some of their other surplus crops 1 has proved in experiments to be one of the best pastures for the sheep and lambs on farms of the state even with lamb valued at only 5 cents a poun I 1 alfalfa pasture brought a gross return of 24 an acre in ex peri perl ments conducted last year by the college the alfalfa maintained an average of seven ewes and twelve lambs an acre for days during the time the lambs were on pasture they gained enough weight to equal pounds of lamb an acre in add tion the pasture maintained the ewes this Is in line with experiments which have been von conducted ducted at several different experiment stations during the past few years and which show that an acre of alfalfa furnished more feed and produced more pounds ot of lamb than any other crop largely as a result of experiments conducted by the college of agrical ture alfalfa has become such a successful and popular crop in the state that the acreage of it has been triple I 1 in the past 14 years in 1919 only 83 68 acres were grown while last year the total was acres it was the experiment station of the agrical tural college which first discovered and demonstrated that the cause for the general failure of alfalfa in 1111 nois was the lach lack of suitable nodule bacteria in the soil since then the institution has followed up with numer ous experiments estabi shing superior varieties improved cultural methods and profitable utilization of the crop As a pasture for sheep and lambs iambs alfalfa seems to be much less likely to cause bloat if the sheep are placed on it and not removed this is the appo ite of what Is commonly ad A satisfactory method to fol low seems to be 0 let the sheep have a good fill of bluegrass blue griss or to feed them a large amount of palatable roughage before they are turned on the alfalfa and then leave them on continuously under this plan no cases of bloat have been reported in experimental worl when alfalfa was pastured this way last year in the 1111 nois experiments it seemed to be lit tie tle if any more I 1 kely to cause bloat t when wet than when dry |
