Alfalfa, the Amazing Forage
THE aroma of freshly mown alfalfa wafts over the fields, sweet and warm. A warm aroma? Well, yes, when you walk in bright sunlight across hay stubble, the black velvety Minnesota loam is warm to your feet, and the breeze is warm, and you associate warmth even with the scent of hay.
Hay is a subject that I had not always relished. I associated it with “sweat bees,” hard work and vociferous cows flailing their tails in hunger. My memories of hay go back to boyhood times in east Tennessee where clover was mowed with a clickety-clack machine drawn by mules. The hay wagon would come and, with grunting and heaving, we would hoist pitchfork bunches up onto the hay frame.
There was always bickering over who rode the wagon because up there it was easier to shape the hay into a mound than it was to heft it aloft. The only time our vengeance was satisfied was when, unknowingly, we included a big snake in a forkful, and it would slither out over the driver’s legs. I still see mental pictures of him bounding with a hoarse yelp clear off the wagon, no matter if it was a 10-foot (3-m) jump.
But that was long ago and far away. Here in Minnesota my brother-in-law, Quen, has been buying and selling and growing hay for 30 years. But there are no mules or wagons or pitchforks in sight. Here the fluffy green alfalfa undulates like the sea over the horizon in 100-acre (41-ha) stretches. Up ahead, receding away from us, a giant red mowing machine is gushing out a windrow of rich green hay.
The All-Around Feed
“Alfalfa produces more protein to the acre than any other of the 25 crops commonly grown in the United States for forage and grains,” my brother-in-law informs me. Due to our living so far apart, in all these years this is the first time I have visited him while he is haying. We are walking between a windrow and the uncut edge of alfalfa. It stands knee-high, dense, yet sensitive to the breeze, with here and there a starlike purple flower showing.
“We’d rather cut it before there’s any bloom at all,” he explains. He pulls up a double handful. “Right now the stems are small and the leaves are tender. At this stage it is about 40 percent more nutritious, a third more digestible, with hardly half the crude fiber it will have a few days later when it is in full bloom and the stems are tough.”
He moves ahead: “The more tender and green the hay, the more of it cows will eat and the more milk they will give. Or”—he thrusts his toe under the windrow and tosses a bunch of alfalfa into the air—“when a farmer feeds beef cattle a 40-percent ration of alfalfa along with corn silage the cattle grow better and faster; and eight pounds of alfalfa becomes one pound of beef.”
It is a revelation to hear him expound authoritatively on the merits and glories of alfalfa. “In some areas it is called lucerne. The Arabic al-fac, facah means ‘the best fodder.’”
Alfalfa, I learn, is the all-around feed for just about any animal on the farm. A cow, when fed no grain, can eat up to 3 percent of her body weight of quality alfalfa (and give 50 pounds of milk). That is half again as much as she can gain from corn silage. When hogs are fed wholly or partially on some form of alfalfa (pellets, meal, etc.) more pigs are farrowed, more are saved, and costs of brood sows and finished market hogs are lowered. Alfalfa lowers the costs by replacing some grains in feeding lambs and ensures an improved “creep” ration. Horses thrive on alfalfa more than on any other forage. Alfalfa meal for poultry provides an economical source of protein, vitamins, minerals and some growth factors not yet understood. In egg production, it furnishes 10 times as much pigmenting color as yellow corn.
South Dakota State University has found that there is as much feed value in five tons of alfalfa as in 104 bushels (3,665 L) of wheat, 113 bushels (3,982 L) of corn or 233 bushels (8,210 L) of oats. Professors Rohweder and Smith of the Department of Agronomy, University of Wisconsin, have determined that a good acre of alfalfa furnishes more than twice the protein as does one of soybeans and three times as much as one of corn.
Such facts magnify in meaning when you consider the University of Minnesota Department of Animal Husbandry’s estimate that a year’s forage costs for one cow have risen from $64 in 1955 to $94 in 1965 to $301 in 1977.
The tractor-drawn mower has come into sight again, delineating the landscape with one more meandering windrow of delicately scented hay. The driver, sweating and grinning, pulls up and stops. Quen points down into the yellow insides of the mower at something as long and thick and dark as a railroad crosstie, only it is furrowed like a giant screw with crushed alfalfa mangled in the grooves. “That rubber roller crushes the crude fiber and flatirons the leaves to fix and condition them. It is sort of like pressing a rose in a book to preserve it. That keeps the leaves from being shattered and lost. It saves about 20 percent of the feed energy.”
Growing and Harvesting Fine Quality
Growing and harvesting a fine grade of alfalfa has become a science as well as a business. Where does it begin? With superior seedlings. There are infinite varieties. One may yield 40 percent more tonnage than another. If you choose the right one, fertilize it properly and cut it at its prebloom peak, it can increase the protein yield per acre by 80 percent over an inferior strain.
So you plant it at just the right time, in fertile, well-drained soil. You safeguard it with pesticides from the more than 60 known diseases to which alfalfa is vulnerable. And there must be less than 25 percent grass and virtually no weeds mixed in it.
Besides its matchless nutritional values alfalfa has proved its superiority as a soil builder. Its deep roots deposit up to 155 pounds (70 kg) of nitrogen per acre to the soil. And farmers have found no better way to fight erosion than with alfalfa and other hay crops. Erosion has become a matter of grave concern.
Erosion Fighter
It is estimated that in the United States only a fifth of the needed forage like alfalfa is being grown. This leaves the country more than ever vulnerable to the ravages of drought. Agronomists (specialists in the art and science of crop production) blame the mass-production practices of the great Corn Belt area for depleting much of the soil-moisture reserves. In a study covering 8.9 million acres (3.6 million ha) of land converted from hay to other crops in 1973-1974, more than half the acreage suffered from poor management of conservation and water reserves.
In most cases little or no attention was given to erosion control. Soil was being lost at the rate of 12 tons an acre. Experts feel that a soil loss of more than five tons per acre is serious. According to the Soil Conservation Service in the Corn Belt proper, soil is blowing and washing away at the disastrous rate of 15 to 100 tons per acre (0.4 ha).
As we walk away from the hayfields, Quen casts a searching look at the sky. He hopes the sun will have time to dry the hay to a moisture content of about 20 percent before they package it by machine into strong, neat bales. If rain comes first it could destroy up to a fifth of the protein value.
Once stored, the alfalfa will need good ventilation to prevent heating and molding—that could destroy another one fifth of the protein.
“You are an agronomist,” I conclude, “because it takes an expert in the art and science of crop production to grow this stuff in peak condition.”
“It’s worth it, no matter what I am,” he replies. “In hay circles alfalfa is known as green gold.”—Contributed.