More About Lucerne.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 7402, 5 March 1903, Page 4

More About Lucerne.

A contributor to the last annual report of the Ontario Agricultural Department writes in very eulogistic terms of this forago crop. After referring to his own experiences with the growth of this nnd other crops the gentleman in question goes on: —Tho longer we grow lucerne the better we like it. Our plan is to put it in after a root crop. We sow the seed ai the rate of 20 pounds to the acre, and put it in with a drilling machine. We usually sow it along with !, a corn crop, and frequently at harvest 11 when we cut our grain the young lu--0 cernc stands from lifteen to twenty-four V inches high. '" As a pasturo crop lucerne is unsurpassed. We have had no trouble with bloating, but there is some danger oi" 0 pasturing it a little too closely. As a h pig pasture we have never seen its equal. As v soiling crop lucerne is excellent. n We have frequently commenced cutting y by the first or second week of May. ]l d is then from eighteen inches to two feet 0 high. We continue cutting three or four times during the season, the total crop - yielding about twenty tons of green foil- { der to the acre. lor milch cows it is a particularly good feed—so good, in fact, that wo huvc found that you cannot materially increase the milk ilow by .<" adding anything to the lucerne ration. Some will admit that lucerne is all 1 right as a soiling crop, but that it is no ( good as hay. We have had it average I six tons to the acre of well-cured crop. 1 My father was very conservative, and i always said he did not like anything but 1 timothy hay for horses. We made mi ' experiment: our experience was such 3 that we would just as kooo feed wellcured lucerne hay three times a day lo { our working team as we would timothy '. hay with throe gallons of oats per horse '. added, and that they would keep in just as good condition,