129 



soils that yield ten to fifteen times as many bushels of sweet 

 potatoes as of corn. The vines are also valuable as food for 

 hogs. 



The value of sweet potatoes will be enhanced by feeding 

 with them a liberal allowance of cowpeas or peanuts, which 

 supply the nitrogenous material in which the sweet potato is 

 deficient. 



EFFECT OF COWPEAS AND PEANUTS ON QUAL- 

 ITY OF PORK. 



The feeding experiments with pigs conducted by the 

 Agricultural Department of this Station during the last two 

 years have been chiefly concerned with a comparison of the 

 nutritive values of cowpeas, peanuts, sweet potatoes, corn and 

 other products of Southern farms. The great aim has been 

 to accumulate information which might make plain the meth- 

 ods of producing pork at the least possible cost and with 

 greatest profit. 



Attention has also been given to the effects of various 

 foods on the quality of pork, ('ercain packing houses paid 

 during the past winter extra prices for hogs that afforded the 

 best quality of pork, that is pork with the largest proportion 

 of lean meat. Whether such pork would bring an advanced 

 price or not, it is certainly important that pork for the family 

 table should be of the best quality. While pork from a thin 

 mature hog is not desirable, lean pork from well nourished 

 animals is more nutritious, or contains more of the very val- 

 uable nitrogenous material, than does pork that has an ex- 

 cessive proportion of fat. 



Both in these experiments and in those recorded in 

 Alabama Bulletin No. 82 the proportion of lean meat was 

 greater in a ration made up of equal weights of cowpeas and 

 corn than with an exclusive corn diet. 



One of the corn fed pigs was very thin throughout the 

 latter half of the experiment and yet when the carcass was 

 examined a marked deficiency in muscular development was 

 noted. 



