Pasture is at once both the cheapest and most
expensive of feeds— cheap because the cow gathers
it herself and because we usually set a low value
on the land where it grows, and yet expensive as
the total nutrients to the acre of pasture are so
small as compared with those secured from more
intensive cropping systems. It requires an acre of



62 THE COW

the very best op two of fairly good pasture to feed
a cow for the summer months and even then she
will not be really fully fed after midsummer. On
the other hand, it is quite usual and feasible to
grow fifteen tons of silage com to the acre or
enough to furnish the main roughage requirements
of three cows for the full feeding period of two
hundred days when they get no food outside.
When fields are steep and rock-strewn, we may
still rely on a primitive pasture husbandry for a
large part of our summer feeding, but it is a
wasteful and extravagant method where lands are
level, fertile and easily tilled. This does not alter
the fact that there are very many farms whose
prosperity is bound up with their pasture areas.
