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fodder-crops.
71
with, or instead of, timothy and clover, various other grasses and leguminous
plants, such as Italian and English rye-grass, common brome-grass, meadow-fescue,
tall oat grass, trefoil, and kidney-vetch. In addition to the leys that are kept
for only one or two years, it has lately become the custom to form perennial
pasture lands, where the greater part of the plants consist of more hardy growths,
such as meadow-fescue, cock’s-foot, tall oat grass, meadow foxtail, bird’s-foot
trefoil, and, above all, lucerne, which is cultivated alone and will give rich
harvests for many years in succession.
The harvest from artificial leys amounts, according to the Swedish official
statistics, to 25—35 quintals per hectare, making a total at the present day of
30—40 million quintals in ordinary years. In addition to this, there is the
hay-harvest from natural meadows, which is calculated at about 10—12
quintals per hectare, or a total of about 15 million quintals.
The total hay-harvest, apart from the pasturage, thus usually amounts to more
than 50 million quintals, of a value of about 250 million kronor, or about V3
of the value of the total harvests of the country.
Of seed (clover, timothy, etc.), the harvest was given in 1911 as no less than
63 420 quintals, but usually falls as low as about 55 000 quintals; the figures
adduced in this respect, however, are very incomplete. The import of
grass-seed in 1910 amounted to 15 830 quintals and usually varies between 30 000
and 40 000 quintals (after subtracting the amount exported), from which it is
seen that the home production is insufficient and usually supplies only about
60 % of the seed needed.
Sweden possesses very extensive areas of natural pastures, but there
are no accurate figures to be had, either of its area or yield.
Formerly, and as long as the two-yearly and a three-yearly rotation of crops
were generally employed, the larger live stock were allowed during the summer
to find their food on the fallow-lands, and, after the hay-harvest on the natural
meadows in enclosed pasture packs as well as in the forests. The pasture-lands are
still of great importance in many parts of the country. In Norrland and in Dalarne,
forest- and mountain-pasturage is still relied upon, the cattle being taken there from
the farms in the early part of the summer; temporary, roughly constructed dwellings
are found at such places, and are called fäbodar (cattle-cottages); here the women
and girls who tend the grazing cattle live, and here they make the butter and
cheese. In Central and Southern Sweden, pasturage is nowadays employed only
on a small scale for milk-cows; on farms where the cultivation is developed to
a higher standard the cattle graze only on the leys, while the pasturage in the
enclosed groves are chiefly reserved for foals and young cattle. Small farmers,
cottagers, and day-labourers on farms, in many places let their cattle graze in
forest pastures, but the right to do so is nowadays being restricted in places
where modern methods of forest-culture have been introduced. In many läns it
is forbidden to allow goats to graze in the woods, a fact that has contributed
to reducing the numbers of these animals. Where the woods are the object of
greater care, sheep, too, are not willingly allowed to pasture there. The best
enclosed pastures in the south of Sweden are probably to be found in Småland,
and especially in the island of Gottland, where the ground is covered with various
kinds of grass and a multitude of herbs, many of the latter being leguminous.
Foliage-trees of various kinds, mostly oak and birch, stand there, either singly or
in more or less dense groups in the small parks. — Of låte years, as we have
mentioned above, the farmers have commenced to form permanent grass-lands
which are employed both for hay-making purposes and for pasture.
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