Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1912 — INVESTIGATION SHOWS MONEY OBTAINED BY PRODUCING PORK [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

INVESTIGATION SHOWS MONEY OBTAINED BY PRODUCING PORK

W’est Virginia Expert Gives Result of Experiment With Two Brood Sows With Twelve Pigs—Animals Conservatively Valued at $65 When They Were Eight Weeks Old.

(By A. J. LEGG, West Virginia.) A few years ago I was talking to a farmer and business man who said that he always thought that it cost nearly 20 cents per pound to produce pork. At that time he had not had much experience with hogs and I could not give him any definite figures on the subject, but it put me to Investigating. I put a 31-pound grade pig in a pen, fed him and mixed ground feed such as the farm produced mixed with water. , When the pig was-five months old he was slaughtered and weighed 103 pounds. The pig had eaten 384 pounds of feed at SI.OO per hundred pounds. If the pig is valued at $2.00 at the time the feeding began it would make the pork *ost $0,056 per pound. Last spring I weighed and kept an account of the feed required for two brood sows with twelve, pigs. The feeding began about a week before the pigs were farrowed and continued until the pigs were eight weeks old. At the end of the period I found that the pigs averaged thirty pounds each and that I had fed them the fol-

lowing ration with the retail value that prevailed here at the time: 535 lbs. wheat middlings, $1.70 per 100 $ 9.i0 One and a quarter bushels of corn, SI.OO bushel 1.25 102 lbs. mixed feed, $2.00 per 100 2.04 50 lbs. corn meal, $2.00 per 100. 1.00 2% bu. potatoes, 40c per bu... 1.00 Total ..$14.00 If we divide $14.39 by twelve, the number of pigs, we find that the feed bill cost practically $1.20 each for the Pigs. A fair estimate of the labor caring for the sows and pigs and feed for the sows during the gestation period would likely add SI.OO per head to the cost of the pigs which would put the cost up tb $2.20 each. They would have sold readily at from three to four dollars each right from the farm. I sold nine .of them for breeding stock for $52.50 and have on hand one of the best ones for a brood sow and two of the smaller ones for killing. In all the pigs are conservatively valued at $65 at eight weeks old.

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