Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1875 — Pig Pork vs. Heavy Hogs. [ARTICLE]

Pig Pork vs. Heavy Hogs.

About the time that whales became so scarce that the supply of oil for light began to fail, the manufacture of lard oil became an important industry. Then coal-oil began to compete, and in turn petroleum drove both out of the market for illuminating purposes. Before lardoil became an important product the principal pork demand was for mediumsized pigs that would average 200 pounds. Lard-oil made a market for heavy, fat hogs. The packing demand has kept the market pretty lively for heavy hogs since. This will continue to be the case so far as barreled pork is concerned; but for bacon, hams, shoulders and especially for shipping East for cutting on butchers’ blocks there, and for butchers’ use here, the model packers use wellfatted pigs, nine to twelve months old, that will average 200 pounds each. Such will always bring about 10 per cent, more than the average heavy hog; no mean matter when it is considered that, by thus feeding, once wintering may be avoided. We have a neighbor, a commission merchant, who, besides his business talent, has a taste for farming, and who cultivates this taste. He yearly fattens from ten to fifteen pigs, buying them in the summer at about three months old, slaughtering them at ten months old or when they weigh 200 200 pounds. He makes it pay, notwithstanding he has to buy most of his feed. Small hams and breakfast-bacon, rather thin sides, with alternate streaks of fat and lean, are what are especially sought for in our city markets, and bring large prices—fully three cents per pound more than the great, fat. twenty-pound joints. Why? People who can afford it J irefer young, juicy meat to old, tough oints. There were about 6,000,000 hogs slaughtered in Chicago during the season of 1874-’75, and yet there is a scarcity of hams and bacon, such as young, wellfatted pigs make. Again, why? The answer is simple: Western farmers have got into the habit of thinking that two and three year old hogs, weighing 400 pounds and over, are the ones tuat bring the most money. They are running too much into mammoth pork. Barreled pork is used less and less, except to feed navvies and laborers in regions difficult of access. A thrifty spring pig, wintered once, and kept until it weighs 400 pounds, will c*st doable, and 25 per cent, added, what the 200-pound porker will. That is, the two pigs, butchered when they weigh 200 pounds each, will bring more money at less cost than the 400-pound hog. Take your slates and figure for yourselves, and, if you cannot make it come out so, ’* The Farm and Garden” will give the figures. Stock hogs will probably be scarce next tall. It will pay this spring to take care of all early pigs and force them to an e rly maturity next winter. —“ Farm and Garden,” in Chicago Tribune.