530 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



PLAN 5.— A HOG FARM. 



The returns that may "be expected on this 80-acre farm from making 

 hogs the main source of income and by following one of the better plans 

 of hog raising will now be considered. 



PASTUEE CROPS DESIRABLE FOE HOGS. 



A bushel of corn fed to hogs on a dry lot or in a pen will produce on 

 an average 10 pounds of pork. The same corn fed in connection with 

 bluegrass, clover, or other suitable pasture will produce 30 per cent more 

 pork; laesides the hogs will be healthier, and there will be much less 

 danger from disease in the pastured hogs. 



In replanning the 80-acre farm here under consideration as a hog farm, 

 therefore, suitable pasture crops w'ill be provided throughout the season. 

 An acre of clover pasture or its equivalent should carry, when at its 

 best, 12 to 20 hogs. In the present plan it is assumed that each brood sow 

 on the farm will have one litter of 6 pigs a season, probably in April, and 

 that 15 "bushels of corn will carry a sow a year or produce a pig weigh- 

 ing 200 pounds. 



CROPPING PLAN. 



While a ewe and her lamb in the farm system presented in plan 4 will 

 scarcely eat 130 pounds of grain a season, two pigs will eat 1,680 pounds 

 of grain, or more than twelve times as much as the sheep. Sheep are 

 primarily grass eaters. Hogs economically consume large quantities of 

 grain. At the outset, then, it is seen that a hog farm must provide an 

 abundance of grain, and in central Illinois that grain is corn. 



In order therefore, to grow as large an area of corn as possible and 

 still follow a rotation of crops that will not permit of corn being planted 

 on the same field oftener than two years in succession, with two years 

 intervening before another corn crop is planted on the same field (for 

 reasons that have been explained in plan 3), only one-half of the farm at 

 most can be put into corn in a four-year rotation. 



If there is set aside, therefore, as in all the plans heretofore con- 

 sidered, about 8 acres for the house, barn, orchard, garden, and perma- 

 nent pasture for the cows, calves, and colts, there will remain 72 acres 

 on which to grow crops for the fixed stock and the hogs. 



This area may be divided into four fields of 18 acres each and a rota- 

 tion followed of (1) corn, (2) corn, (3) oats, and (4) clover, exactly as 

 discussed in plan 3. The important difference in the two plans is that 

 instead of selling off the corn, as in plan 3, it will be fed on the place. 

 The grain will be made into pork and the farm built up in productiveness 

 considerably more rapidly than where all the corn is sold. 



