Pasturing
Category:
ALFALFA
White clover ranks next to blue grass as a pasture plant
within the area of its adaptation (see page 261), when its
productiveness, continuity in growth, ability to remain in the land,
palatability and nutritive properties are considered together. In
palatability it ranks as medium only. In the early part of the season
while it is still tender and juicy, it will be eaten by stock with
avidity, but as the seed-maturing season is approached, it is not so
highly relished. In nutrition it ranks higher than medium red clover. It
does not make much of a showing in the early part of the season, but in
favorable seasons, about the time that blue grass begins to fail, it
grows rapidly and furnishes much pasture.
It is pre-eminently the complement of a blue-grass pasture. When these
grow together, the two will furnish grazing in a moist year through all
the season of grazing. Both have the property of retaining their hold
indefinitely in many soils and of soon making a sward on the same
without being re-sown, when the cultivation of the ground ceases. The
blue grass grows quickly quite early and late in the season, and the
clover grows likewise during much of the summer. As the older plants of
the clover fail, fresh ones appear, and the blue grass feeds on the
former in their decay. They thus furnish humus and nitrogen for the
sustenance of the blue grass.
But much moisture is necessary in order to insure good blue grass
pastures, and they are more luxuriant when the moisture comes early in
the season, rather than when the plants are nearing the season of bloom.
To such an extent is white clover influenced in growth by such weather,
that in some seasons it will abound in certain pastures, while in others
it will scarcely appear in the same. Those favorable seasons are
frequently spoken of as being white-clover years.
While this plant furnishes good grazing for all kinds of domestic
animals kept upon the farm, as a pasture for horses and mules, there is
the objection to it that it will in a considerable degree so salivate
them that much slobbering follows. This is sometimes produced to such
an extent as to be seriously harmful. The trouble from this cause
increases as the seed-forming season is approached. It has been known
thus to salivate cattle, but the danger of injury to them from this
source is slight. These injurious results to horses will be obviated in
proportion as the other grasses are allowed to grow up amid the clover;
in other words, in proportion as the pasture is not grazed closely early
in the season. The animals which then graze on these pastures must take
other food with the clover.
=Harvesting for Hay.=--Since white clover is seldom grown alone for hay,
and since it seldom forms the most bulky factor in a hay crop, the
methods of harvesting will be similar to those practiced in harvesting
the more bulky factor or factors of the crop. The want of bulk in this
clover is against it as a hay crop, owing to the smallness of the
yields, compared with the other hay crops that may be usually grown on
the same land. As a factor of a hay crop, however, this little plant
will add much to its weight and also to its palatability, especially for
sheep and dairy cows.
When it is grown for hay in mixtures in which the large clovers or
timothy predominates, the white clover should, of course, be cut at the
most suitable season for cutting these clovers or the timothy, as one is
present in excess. When the larger clovers predominate, the method of
curing will be the same as for curing these (see page 234), that is to
say, it can best be cured in cocks. When timothy predominates, the
method of curing will be the same as for timothy; that is to say, it may
be cured in the cock or in the winrow, according to circumstances. Owing
to the fineness of the stems, it may be cured more quickly than red
clover; hence, its presence in a crop of timothy will not delay much the
curing of the latter unless when present in great abundance.
Under some conditions it would be easily possible to grow white clover
for hay alone, and in some instances with profit, more especially in
providing what would be a matchless fodder for young lambs and young
calves. It might be so grown in the clover lands that lie immediately
southward from Lakes Superior and Huron, in the northern Rocky Mountain
valleys and on the valley lands around Puget Sound. On these lands in a
favorable season, it would be quite possible to cut not less than 2 tons
per acre, while on average land white clover alone would not yield more,
probably, than 1/2 ton per acre. But even when grown for the purpose
named, some alsike clover sown along with the white clover would add to
the yield of hay, and without in any considerable degree lessening its
value for the use named.
Next:
Securing SeedPrevious:
Sowing
Viewed: 628
Informational.ca
