Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1875 — How to Make Hogs Profitable. [ARTICLE]

How to Make Hogs Profitable.

I know It to be the practice* of many good farmers to feed their stock hogs corn during the entire summer, which my cxSeriencc has to tight me is very unprofitale. lam speaking of general hog raising, not ol- those who are raising a few fancy pigs and expect to get them off for extra stock, as we Western people call it. Where a man has hogs that he wants to keep in a thriving condition and feed off on new corn he certainly does not want to feed them much if any* corn during the summer, as my experience has proved to me that the corn young hogs would eat duringthe summer would build you a hogpasture fence, and if your pasture is good your hogs would be in a far better condition for feeding than if they had all the corn through the summer they would eat. You may take a pig that will weigh 123 pounds at the time lie is turned on grass and put another equally as good where it can get no grass, feeding it on corn and water, letting the other run on grass until the middle of September, then commence feeding green corn to both, and in three months the one off the grass will be far ahead of the corn-fed pig. * I know some of the old men will not believe all this, but a trial will convince them that lam right. Two years ago my neighbor had a nice lot of shoats and I had equally as nice a lot; and we both had pastures much alike. I was determined to beat him if possible. I knew he had no corn to feed them after he turned on grass, and as I had plenty I concluded to fiedsome -corn every day with the pasture, and su;a enough my hogs did a little better than his, but when we commenced feeding new corn in the fall his hogs beat mine badly, and at the end of three months’ feeding his hogs were fully one-fourth better than mine. Like experiments have fully cured me of feeding pigs corn through the summer.. But some will say, we have not the means to get the fencing. I would say, sell your corn and buy fencing, 6r if you have opt the com by all means sow oats it you have not the clover near your hogpen, and mow as soon as large enough and feed this. _ Some will say, it will not do to feed sows with young pigs only glass, hut it certainly would be far bettor,-as my experience has proved to me that the pigs will do far better if the sows have plenty of grass, and in the fall, after the pigs are weaned, the sows will put on fat twice as fast as though they had corn through the summer. If you have milk give it to the pigs instead of to the mother ; but slop will not hurt any hog.— R. Fawcett, in Viastern Rural.