J. W. SANBORN, Pittsfield, N. H. When an ancient Jewish writer desired to picture a state of ideal happiness for the pastoral people to whom he spoke, he likened it to the condition of flocks led into "green pastures." Green pastures, luxuriant and composed of mixed herbage, has long been popularly regarded as supplying the ideal stock feed, both in point of economy and efficiency. Strictly good pastures are but a reminiscence. Time was when the fathers wintered their cattle indifferently and depended on the fresh pastures to make a rapid growth and to fatten quickly and well. Now, good feeders make a better growth in the winter than in the summer, and depend on grain feeding when the better class of beef or the best flow of milk is to be gained and continued. When a resident of the blue-grass section of Missouri, I was told of pastures that would make their three pounds of growth per day for fatting steers, when supplemented with grain, and more growth was not uncommon, passing 100 pounds per month. The grain added something to the growth, no doubt, but was used more for the purpose of securing quality than quantity. A good Leicestershire pasture in England excels this record. Age has told adversely on the pastures of New England, and Nature, in her efforts to keep up an equilibrium, rotates crops by growths of weeds and brushes. These are accompanied by shade that impairs the growth of grass and injures its quality, for crops in the shade are inferior in palatability and nutritive value. The grasses in an old pasture are apt to be of the inferior sorts low in palatableness, therefore eaten in less quantity and having inferior growing capacity. This trouble is accentuated by the labor essential to * Address delivered at Farmers' Days, Greenwich, N. Y. secure the needed bodily requirement. In New Hampshire it will require at least five acres to carry a cow for but a part of the season, and a tedious day's labor to secure a living. This all means low milk flow except in the month of June. Here you have better pastures, yet of reduced capacity and quite below the standard that should be set. PASTURES A LIMITING FACTOR The decline of our pastures is one of the important factors that has had to do with the decline of farm values, the departure of the old farm families to other industries and locations, and the general dissatisfaction with agriculture as a vocation in the East. Pastures are a marked illustration of the power of habit and the influence of a name. We are content to accept from pastures a carrying power of a cow half fed on three to six acres during four or five months, said cow giving but a partial fraction of what might be secured if rightly cared for. If we reduce the full carrying power of an acre for a full year, we find that it requires for the average pasture of the East, including New England, ten to twelve acres. The higher type of farming now aimed at asks each acre to carry a cow a full year, exclusive of grain. Under the latter system the cow is highly nourished with little effort and can turn her power to production. On many farms, probably the majority, the carrying capacity of an acre in pasture could be multiplied at least eight to ten times. Granting this, light is thrown upon the fact that our farms are believed to be inadequate to give the income required to maintain the modern farm family in accordance with the standards of living prevailing in our cities, and with the desires of our sons and daughters. Farms should give the standard of living demanded by the times and the culture and opportunities of the age, otherwise farming as an industry will be left to men of inferior ambition. The trouble with the times in its relation to farming is to be looked for largely in ourselves. The rapid settlement of the West and its flood of cheap food discouraged us. We drew in on tillage crops, the application of capital, labor and plant food, pursued a passive type of farming, increasing our pasture area and permitted these pastures to slide down the plane of fertility without This will come an effort to maintain them. The effect of this was a narrowing income in an age of expanding expense account. The fixed charges of the farm grew and grew, especially the family expense, until the cost of labor, fertilizers, grain, machinery and buildings, came to equal the gross receipts, and at last failed to leave a margin adequate to give the type of living and the dollars over for a rainy day that farmers felt was their need and due. The remedy for this state of affairs is an enlargment of income. and come readily by deepening the processes of the farm, but more especially by broadening its efforts. Every acre should be laid under the fullest powers of the mind and capital of its owner. No place offers such opportunity for expansion as these passive pasture acres; they at once admit of more than doubling the income, indeed, of tripling and often quadrupling the gross receipts of the farm. Hence it is that I feel that the weak spot of the farm is the pastures. THE UNOBSERVED OPPORTUNITY FOR IMPROVEMENT OF OUR PASTURES Probably one of the most important losses due to poor pastures is generally unobserved. Everyone is cognizant of the lessened milk flow that begins in the month of July and continues until the cows come to the barn. Few keep the milk flow up to the normal of good winter conditions or those of June. Pasture appears to be so much cheaper than grain, that there is a reluctance to feed grain, and most farmers hestitate to go to the mows in which is stored the winter's supply of food. There is so far an appearance of saving by this policy, that the practice of enduring fading pastures is a common one rather than the exception. But during this poor pasture period, ending in late fall months, and of insufficient feed, something else is being lost other than milk. The scales, if used, would show a continuing loss in the weight of the cow. This means much. Not only has a thousand pounds of milk been the forfeit, but this continuing loss is one that must be returned to the cow before she can renew her normal milk flow, which will not be until after calving. The loss of milk flow, accompanying the loss of weight, will be continued, though in a lessening degrec, until the full loss of 100 to 150 or more pounds of weight is restored. The most careful experiments in stock feeding show that under the best conditions it requires ten pounds of food to make a pound of growth. Thus a thousand pounds or more of food must be fed in the barn before the cow has returned to her normal weight and stored up the energy for a full milk flow. Nothing has been saved, then, by short pastures or by withholding food at the barn during short pasturage. On the contrary, the lessened milk flow during the short pasturage has not been made up, nor could it possibly be made up, since the period of drying preceding another calving is attended by a naturally decreasing milk flow. Our poor pastures are at the root of much of the short milk production for which the average herd is credited, and, as stated, it is the chief factor in the low income. that has made farming unpopular. HOW TO IMPROVE PASTURES There are several methods of pasture improvement that I shall briefly discuss, but I desire to state at the outset that there is one royal road to pursue when it is possible. Every acre of the pasture that can well be made subject to the plow should be forced to give the full return of that field area by being placed in the regular crop rotation. This is my course. It involves, of course, more cost, but this is warranted by the greater productivity and also by the fact that ground that is grazed will not carry as much stock as ground from which field crops are harvested. At the Utah Experiment Station I fed three lots of steers on three equal areas. One lot was grazed, one was cut and fed green in the stable, and the other was cut, dried and fed in the stable. The lot that was grazed required 28 per cent. more area to carry the stock a given time than the other two; or to put it in another form, the section that was cut and fed in the stable had 1,481 pounds of food remaining when the grazed lot was exhausted. This factor may not be the deciding one, but coupled with the greater productivity of a pasture kept under manures in a regular way, it has a marked bearing on the problem. At the end of an eight-year rotation, the pasture is grazed for eight years. At this date, the 8th of May, I have had 43 cows daily on 41 acres since |