Show sheep dowell dowell on alfalfa pastures experiments result in acreage of the popular crop being doubled BY W G kil assistant AM latant calt in sheep colloso of agriculture university ot of innoes 1 s alfalfa to which illinois farmers are turning as a substitute for corn and some of their other surplus crops has proved in experiments to be one of the best pastures for the sheep and lambs on farms of the state even with iamb vainer at only 5 cents a pound alfalfa pasture brought a gross return of 24 an acre in experiments peri 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 w weight eight to equal pounds of lamb an acre in addition the pa pasture ture maintained the ewes this Is in line with experiments which have been conducted 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 agriculture alfalfa has become such a successful and popular crop in the state that the acreage of it has been tripled trip lel in the past 14 years in 1919 1910 only 88 acres were grown while last year the total was acres it was the experiment station of the agricultural college which first discovered and demonstrated that the cause for the general failure of alfalfa in illinois was the lack of suitable nodule bacteria in the soil since then the institution has followed up with numerous experiments establishing superior varieties improved Improve 6 cultural methods and profitable utilization of the crop As a pasture for sheep and lambs alfalfa seems to he be much less likely to cause bloat if the sheep are placed on it ant and riot not removed this Is the opposite of what Is commonly advised A satisfactory method to follow seems to be to let the sheep have bare a good fill of bluegrass or to feed them a large amount of palatable ablo 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 ex experimental peri mental work when alfalfa was pastured this way last year in the illinois experiments it seemed to be little it if any more likely to cause bloat when wet than when dry |