AN ALL-ROUND CROP

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 465, 24 February 1933, Page 7

AN ALL-ROUND CROP

LUCERNE CAN BE PUT TO MANY USES ON A FARM. Many uses can be found for lucerne including a yaluable poultry food. In a dried state, it can serve as a substitute for the better known meals, 01* as a hase with which they can be mixed. A correspondent of a Wellington paper stafes that in Galifornia, wliex'e ' the plant is cropped isdx or seven ; times a year, lucerne is sun-dried and ] then hoiled as a food for poultry, pigs and young stoclc. When broken up in its dried state, the thieker stems and hranches of the pl'ant contain a good deal of food material wihich, when boiled, possess almost as much flesh-forminig nutriment as ground wheat, pollard or maize. I11 these times, when economy in production means so much to the farmer, it is advisahle that the possibilities of lucerne as a substitute for the more expensive stock and poultry foods should be fully investigated, when it will be found that ■ the plant is capahle of much more syaried uses than its ordinary green sY-ate would sugghst. ■Whole hooks and pamphlets have beeV written on the subject, and it wou 'd well repay a little study on the vpart of the poultry-man or the pigNaiser to follow up the matter more f\ly. In addition, of course, it can be Ved'hi its dried condition for any othev sto v-k. As a base, when mixed with i_,d's, pollard, crushed maize, wheat, goes a long way to reduce thev^st of "hard feed" and is almost as v¥|ttening itself as any of the foods iA|ntioned. The "wheat control" bugh^ar now complained of should have no^errors for the farmer, [ if he will but thrn his attention to the possibilities of lucerne (or alfalfa) as a substitute for the better known meals, or as a cheap base with which they can be mixed.