Pork Production With Forage Crops. 263 



of turning swine onto a field to gather the corn which they eat is 

 termed "hogging off or down," and was formerly looked upon as a 

 shiftless or lazy procedure. It has lately grown much in favor, and is 

 found to be good farm economy when rightly managed. The hogs 

 should not be given access to the entire field, but should be allowed the 

 run of but a portion of the field at a time. By so doing, the hog 

 may have fresh food, even though of the same character, every eight 

 or ten days and will also, by this method, clean up his harvesting opera- 

 tions as he goes. A portion of the field is set aside from the rest by 

 temporary fences of hurdles. A wire fence with posts temporarily lo- 

 cated is sometimes used, but wire fencing is difficult to handle in 

 heavy corn. If the field cannot be subdivided, a very good practice is to 

 turn in both large and small hogs. The large hogs will break down the 

 corn and the smaller ones will clean up what is left by the larger; how- 

 ever, the first-mentioned practice is the more desirable. 



This system of harvesting corn is most advantageous when the 

 weather is dry. It may not be most profitable to keep hogs on corn 

 after heavy rains, as there is likely to be a waste of com and also injury 

 to the hogs and to the land. Corn, when harvested in this manner, 

 may return a net profit of $20.00 to $35.00 per acre. Missouri Experi- 

 ment Station during the past season received an average net return of 

 $36.24: per acre, with pork at 6 cents per pound. 



HOG FORAGE CROP ROTATIONS. 



A seeming lack of adaptability of forage crops to lend them- 

 selves well to rotation systems has perhaps more than anything else, 

 worked against the general use of especially provided forage crops for 

 hogs. They do, however, when carefully planned, lend themselves well 

 to systems of crop rotation. 



The difficulties involved in planting forage crop rotations are, first, 

 to meet reciuirements at all times of the forage season; second, to select 

 the forage adaptable to the particular class of animals to which it is 

 to be fed; third, to so arrange the system that the amount of labor 

 will be distributed throughout the season; and, fourth, to conserve and 

 to increase as rapidly as possible the fertility of the soil. These re- 

 quirements may be well met under varvnng conditions by some of the 

 following two, three or four year crop rotations. 



To secure the best results with forage crops and to build up the 

 soil fertility to the greatest possible extent, it is necessary in any crop 

 rotation that there be introduced a leguminous or nitrogen gathering 

 crop. One of the most perfect nitrogen gathering crops that we have 



