116 . BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



thousand or six thousand pounds. Some of my neighbors 

 asked me repeatedly, in a manner not reflecting credit upon 

 my judgment and management, whether it paid to keep so 

 many hogs. But they have not criticised me unfavorably 

 now for several years : I mean as a farmer. 



My pork has just about paid for the food consumed. Some 

 years there was a profit : one year I sold three hogs for twenty 

 cents per pound, when they actually cost about ten cents, 

 clearing some ninety-five dollars. 



I have found that one bushel of corn or meal will make 

 about ten pounds of pork, and knowing the price of corn 

 enables me to determine for what price I can make and sell 

 the pork without loss. Thus, when corn is sixty cents per 

 bushel, I can sell hogs, net, for six cents per pound. 



Another fact I have found out in this connection, to my 

 own satisfaction at least, that for profit hogs should be killed 

 rather young, say, from eight to twelve months of age. 



I kill twice a year ; but then I force my hogs with all T 

 can get them to eat, and with a variety of food at that. 



But the quantity of manure I made was wholly inadequate 

 to my wants. As soon as I could spare money, I bought 

 fertilizers, — wood-ashes (which I could then buy, even of 

 farmers, at from twelve to seventeen cents per bushel) and 

 Peruvian guano. 



I have continued, until the present time, to buy and use 

 various substances; such as leached and unleached ashes, 

 Peruvian guano, bone-meal, dissolved bone, super-phosphate, 

 Brighton fertilizer, fish-pomace, slaughter-house and stable 

 manure, and, I may add, Stockbridge fertilizer. The pres- 

 ent year I have used no ashes, but, for the previous twelve 

 vears, from five hundred bushels to nine hundred bushels 

 per year. Leached ashes give as good results on my land as 

 unleached. Thus far, I have used nothing that has paid as 

 well as ashes and Chincha-island guano ; while Brighton 

 fertilizer and slaughter-house manure have paid the least. 

 I am sorry to say that the Stockbridge fertilizers don't seem 

 to help my crops as I hoped. 



I have purchased, and used on my sixteen acres of land, 

 for the last nine years, an average of more than seven hun- 

 dred dollars' worth yearly of such fertilizing substances as I 

 have already mentioned: in addition, my cattle, hogs, and 



