Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1874 — Farmers, Hold Your Hogs. [ARTICLE]

Farmers, Hold Your Hogs.

Daniel C. Richards, Secretary of Mont; gomery Council P. of IL, gives the following advice in the Prairie Farmer of Oct. 31: - * Fellow 7 Patrons and farmers, the season has again arrived when the packers and dealers in the hog product are at their old trick of trying to create a panic in the hog market, although the best authority that we have access to shows conclusively that the hog crop is largely short. The corn crop is also short, which will have the effect to still further shorten the pork crop as the season advances. Still hundreds of farmers are rushing their hogs upon the market at a sacrifice. You must recollect that the corn your hogs were fatencd on was high-priced corn, worth from sixty to sixty-five cents per bushel, so that from six to seven cents is the low-est price for pork that will bring you out clear, but if you will persist in rushing your hogs half-fatted on the market, can you blame the packers and dealers for buying them as low as they can? Now what is the remedy? Have we forgotten the lesson es last year so soon, that by keeping the bulk of the hogs off the market for the space of five weeks the price was advanced in the local markets from three to five cents per pound. Look at the option deals that are being made—-contracts for the future —at a less figure than cash meats are nqw worth. Nqjv suppose you keep your hogs off the market, how are they going to fill their orders? They must have the hogs or break. Had you not better feed some more high-priced corn than to lose on all yotr have fed up to this time? But, says one, I have not the corn nor the money to buy with. Then there is a way you can hold your hogs cheaply if you can keep them for two weeks longer, till it cools a little; kill, salt and try into lard; this has always paid me, and largely, too. I know 7 several, farmers of my acquaintance who sold their hogs for three and a half cents per pound last fall, who have been for the last three months buying side meat at fifteen to twenty-five cents per pound, and lard at about the same figures., Can you see any profit in that? Now w 7 hat is the prospect for home-cut meat? I argue that it never was more promising, for this reason: Butter is scarce, and is bound to be higher until next June. I see inferior to common quoted at nineteen to twenty cents per pound, while cash lard is fourteen and a half. Good, fat hogs w’ill make lard enough to come to more than the price now ofiered by the buyers, and leave the spare-ribs, back-bones and offal to pay for butchering, while the hams and shoulders will remain clear profit. But the prices now are nothing what they will be next summer and fall. 1 shall not be surprised to see nice; hams’ sell at thirty cepts per pound in less than ten months, and good lard in tubs and buckets at from eighteen to twenty-two cents per pound. Now you perhaps ask why. In the first place the crop to kill before the first of March, ’75, is a short one, and second, | it will in many instances be poorly fatted. Third, there will be no big cribs of old corn to make hogs'for the dune markfit Fourth, the high price of and scarcity of

butter will prevent it being used in lieu of iard. I have had considerable experience and handle and feed hogs by the hundred. I would say to those who have not tried it to kill a good, fat hog of 250pounds;*cut the hams and snoulders nicely and salt and smoke, trying the balance, and then weigh up the product, look at the market price and what the buyer would give for the hog alive, and then see where the money is, to say nothing of the price of meats next spring or summer when you should sell.