474 TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



These can be fed either by the free choice system of allowing the 

 hog access to the minerals, and the hog is a pretty good judge of what 

 he wants to eat and what will give good results. That has been demon- 

 strated clearly. It can be done by the self-feed system or free choice 

 system. The hog knows how to balance his rations if he has access to 

 the feeds he needs. If he has access to the minerals he will take what 

 he needs. He won't take any more than he needs. Or if you want to 

 add it to the ration, it can be done in that way. It will not require for 

 that a great cost, not over a cent a pound per pig per month. So it is a 

 relatively small amount. There is a means of increasing the gains and 

 turning the hogs on the market sooner and increasing the profit. It 

 means a shorter feeding period and increased gains. 



President Sykes : Would you tell the convention about what 

 that would cost them, that mixture as you suggest it there? 



Dean Curtiss : Some of these products are very cheap, for in- 

 stance, common salt. This ground limestone is a cheap product. 

 It ought to be finely ground. That costs comparatively nothing. 

 These other products will vary somewhat in price, but the whole 

 thing, mixed, made up, would not cost over a cent a pound ; per- 

 haps could be bought for even less than that. We have also 

 added to that one ingredient which I have not mentioned. 

 It may be added or it may not, but it is not absolutely essential. 

 That is about one-half ounce, or an ounce, in the hundred pounds 

 of potassium iodide. That is more expensive, but there is so 

 little of that used in the mixture that it has relatively small 

 effect, because it will be less than a pound every hundredweight. 



I think the practical way to get this, instead of the individual 

 farmer buying these products in small quantities where he will 

 probably have to pay high prices, would be for people who are 

 living in a community to have someone buy them in large quan- 

 tities where they could get wholesale rates on them, and put 

 them together and then supply the material mixed and ready to 

 use at cost, and in that way it would not need to cost to exceed 

 a cent a pound, and there are times when it could propably be 

 purchased for considerably less than that, especially if bought 

 in large quantities. If you bought it in the form of some pre- 

 pared food products sold by agents and distributed through the 

 drug stores, you would probably pay ten times that much for it. 



These are some of the important lines of investigation that we 

 have had in progress and have in progress yet and are working on 

 all the time. Perhaps in this connection, bearing upon the ques- 

 tion of what the experiment station is doing for the feeders and 

 the farmers of Iowa, it might be pertinent to ask what the 

 feeders and the cattle breeders of Iowa are doing for themselves; 



