l-a-2 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



carry the most pounds of valuable meat, putting it on in the most economi 

 cal manner, and be able to keep this up from one generation to another. 

 While this combination is not impossible In the niiarket hog, yet it will 

 require constant attention in selection and mating. 



Breeding hogs can be kept in a more suitable condition if they are kept 

 in a lot by themselves. I do not mind, however, having them with the 

 stock cattle, providing they can have a part of the shed fenced off for 

 sleeping quarters, where they should have a good bed, with plenty of 

 fresh air. Have the hogs' sleeping quarters on the ground; a well 

 bedded cement floor is very good; a plank floor laid on the ground is the 

 best floor I know. While range exercise and pure air are essentials, the 

 kind of feed is quite as important. We are developing the future herd, 

 and we must not expect to make bricks without straw, which we will 

 force them to do if we -feed on corn alone. While corn is quite an es- 

 entlal and should form the greater part of the sows' winter ration, it 

 must be supplemented with some kind of protein and bone forming ma- 

 terial. I know of no better feed for this purpose than good oat meal. 

 There is something in oats for the development of the unborn farm ani- 

 mals that we do not find in any other feed. For several years, until this 

 year, oats have been out of the question, having been either too high 

 priced or so low in quality that we have been compelled to look around 

 for other feeds. Second cut clover hay will be eaten readily by brood 

 sows, or have their sleeping quarters in connection with a good clover 

 meadow,, and some winters they will be able to range out on it the most 

 of the time. One open winter my hogs had no other source of protein 

 feed than this kind of pasture and I never had sows do any better nor 

 have any stronger pigs. The use of tankage has been quite prominent 

 in our feeding problem. I usually feed it in a self-feeder, mixed with 

 ashes or charcoal and enough salt put in to keep them from eating too 

 much of it. Sometimes oil meal is used in the same way — the coarser 

 kind. As to cotton seed meal, I can say nothing about it from my own 

 experience. I do not think, however, that it is a good feed for brood sows; 

 at least, we know that a drug causing abortion is made from the cotton 

 plant. My hogs never have to depend on myself or a man for water; 

 they can go to their tank in winter or the creek in summer any time they 

 want to. 



A week or so before farrowing time our sows are placed in single 

 pens in our hog house and given a slop ration not much different in 

 quality or analysis from that which they received outside. We use oil 

 meal in place of the tankage to keep their systems in better condition, and 

 it is much pleasanter to handle, and as we do not care to change her feed 

 again, her pigs will more readily take to eating the slop if the tankage 

 is left out. Mix ground oats and middlings, equal parts, with a fourth 

 as much oil meal and water, to make slop. Feed her gradually until she 

 gets used to it. However, after she farrows, she should have nothing but 

 water for twenty-four hours, then give her a light slop, gradually in- 

 creasing it for about a week or ten days, when she will be on feed again. 

 If she is put on feed too soon she is likely to produce more milk than 

 the pigs will take at this time, and have a fevered udder, which will 

 produce scours in the pigs, and later a caked udder, which is so painful 

 that she will not allow the pigs to suckle. 



