A PLACE FOR THE FIG ON THE FARM. 73 



running- in debt $7,000 and paying eight per cent interest. I 

 knew nothing about stock raising and so made many mistakes 

 at first along the line of raising pigs. But I made this business 

 a study and year by year kept improving upon my methods, and 

 I soon found that the hog was profitable to us, and it was only 

 a few years before we had our farm paid for and were laying 

 up money rapidly. To show you what hogs may do in the 

 West — not what they always do but what may be done with 

 them — I will give you my experience for the last two years. We 

 occupy about sixty acres of land with pasture and grain, in our 

 business. While we have more land than this, we find that we 

 can raise only a certain number of hogs in one herd and make 

 the business profitable ; in order to enlarge, we should have to 

 make new pastures and new pens, in other words, practically 

 fit up a new ranch, so we raise only about 150 a year. We have 

 about forty acres of corn, and the rest of the sixty acres in oats 

 or pasture. With this we buy $300 worth of shorts or bran. 

 (By shorts I mean wheat middlings.) Two years ago we sold 

 the products on the open markets at regular prices for $2,384. 

 Last year hogs were a little higher, and we sold $2,700 worth 

 from the same area. Deducting $300 for the feed bought each 

 year, it gives us about $2,100 and $2,400 respectively, for those 

 two years. We cannot always do quite as well as that, as pork 

 has been high, but we have never seen a year since we began 

 the industry but that we have made it pay, and pay well. 



There were several things which I took into consideration when 

 I went into this business. I found that if I followed the same 

 methods that my neighbor did, I had to compete with him ; but 

 if I could keep my pigs a little more healthy so that I did not 

 have as much loss, and could raise them a little more cheaply, 

 I had an advantage, and we worked along those two lines. 



W r e will consider first the brood sow. Let me say that a man to 

 be successful in raising pigs for pork does not need to keep a full- 

 blood brood sow. She can be of any type, but the sire should 

 always be full-blood and also a good individual of his breed. 

 What constitutes a good brood sow? I shall not say much 

 about breed, as we have found that there is more in type than 

 in breed. The breeders who have been raising the different 

 breeds of animals have all been aiming toward that ideal porker, 

 a hog that we can rear cheaply and that is always ready for the 



