Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Mark Nagel <activism98201@verizon.net>]

My back seems to remember seeing lots of alfalfa when I was a kid (I used to 
toss around bales that weighed more than me)!  We had a couple of horses and 
a couple of beef cows (White Face Holsteins I believe).  And through the 
miracle of flashbacks I can recall stuffing flakes of alfalfa into the cows' 
stanchions.

We had good pasture as well.  I don't recall any episodes of bloat.  But 
people should watch out for bloat (a friend of the family lost a champion 
barrel-racing horse from bloat; and she, the friend, was very horse savvy 
[I'm sure that the horse was also horse savvy :-)]).


-Mark Nagel
Everett, WA


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From: Fargir@aol.com


In a message dated 6/21/2006 1:10:05 P.M. Central Standard Time, 
tradingpost@riseup.net writes:My   statement was "alfalfa hay *normally* 
isn't fed directly to   cattle".
Where'd I get that? From old ranchers of course.  They'd   bloat and die,
like eating too much clover.     I had to come out of lurk mode to reply to 
that statement. I am a Iowa farm girl-- (now about 30 years off the farm but 
still go "home" to the farmstead. Mom is 87 but still living on the farm with 
the help of my brother :-} ) Dad raised Hereford cattle, just a small herd of 
25, top.During winter, ALL the cattle were fed, was alfalfa hay and some corn 
on the cob.  The ONLY time that we worried about bloat was early spring and 
they would get through the fence into the  corn.

[snip]