The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1926-03-04
BLUE VALLEY FARM SERVICE
M. A. Nye
Seeding Time Just Around
the Corner

the SOrner
1t won't be long now before plant
ing time. Although official spring is
still two weeks away, plans for the
spring. planting are being made and
remade this very day in every farm
home in Minnesota. When the wealth
er opens up and the actual planting
begins it will merely be the carrying
out of the plans that are being made
today. Too much thought and study
cannot be given to planning and
planting.
When spring comes there will be
calves in the cow barn, pigs in the
hog pen, chicks in the poultry house,
some little lambs, perhaps colt or
two or maybe a little mule. Every
calf, every pig, every chick will be as
perfect as the material which nature
will have had to work with. Spring
will have brought them. Nature will
have done her part well. The rest
will remain with the farmer. The
little creatures will need food; they
will need water; they will need care.
They will be yours TO make success
or failure with them. 1t will be large
ly up to you whether they will do
their SHARP to make the farm pros
porous orEhether they will take up
your board and room without giving
fair equivalent in return.
In your planting plans, Mr.. Farm
er, are you making allowance for
these newcomers? When they come,
will they have enough of the right
eventually to bring others on? Will
L., cfoyn orI
for you, or will you be no better off
after they have gone? Heed these
questions well, that you and your
household may be blessed and happi-
ness and prosperity reign over your
home.
1 have before ME a report of
feeding test conducted by one of ou1
largest agricultural colleges, and l
am giving it here only because it
shows so we'll what any farmer might
expect from alfalfa. The trial was
made to compare alfalfa and timothy
hay. The heifers in the test averag-
ed four to five months of age and
were kept on feed for 120 days. One
lot received timothy hay and about
2 pounds of grain day, while the
other received alfalfa hay with an
equal amount of the same grain.
Everything in this test was on ex-
actly the same basis that any dairy
man might follow. The roughage
was consumed at will, as in every
day farming, and no attempt made to
equalize what was taken in. The al
falfa lot made better gains from the
start and on the whole these gains
were more economical. The timothy
group did not do so we'll. The alfalfa
group increased their weight and
height for the normal of their kind
the timothy group did not come up to
the normal development. The alfalfa
group produced not only better calf,
but one at less cost.
This particular test demonstrated
the superiority of alfalfa over timo-
thy, which is not legume. But al
falfa will do as we'll as clover, the
most common of legumes, and go al
longer way.
And what alfalfa will do for calves,
it will do for cows. The Illinois ex-
pertinent station reports that in many
cases expensive feeds for dairy cows
can be replaced with home grown al
falfa with very good results. This is
so, they point out, because alfalfa is
especially suited for milk production
owing to it's palatibility, easy diges-
tibility, and its cooling and laxative
qualities. Two lots of cows receiv-
ing a ration of corn meal, corn sill
age, clover and wheat bran produced
23.S pounds of milk day. The same
ration, except that the wheat bran,
was replaced by an equal weight of
alfalfa hay, made an average pro-
duction of 24.4 pounds of milk,
thereby demonstrating that alfalfa
hay for cows and milk is at least
equal to wheat bran, pound for
pound.
Alfalfa will do all these things and
more. Even while it is producing