FOURTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V. 451 



Alfalfa is really the best forage crop for hogs. Alfalfa yields per- 

 manent pasture which returns high acre profits and enables the hog man to 

 secure a maximum of cents for the corn marketed the alfalfa way. Alfal- 

 fa, however, is excelled by Dwarf Essex Rape in this particular: rape re- 

 quires less protein supplement along with the corn fed hogs in it than 

 does the alfalfa simi)ly because rape furnishes a high proportion of pro- 

 tein in a mixture of food constituents, said mixture having a very narrow 

 nutritive ratio. Furthermore, our observations have been that hogs eat 

 more rape than alfalfa especially when they are young; this naturally 

 affords opportunity for the balancing of a larger amount of corn. The 

 happy combination suggested is alfalfa-rape, the latter being used largely 

 to obviate the necessity of buying high priced protein supplements. 



Peculiarly enough, taking an early one in a continuous series of years 

 as a standard of comparison we find that rape produces pork more cheap- 

 ly under our conditions at Ames than does alfalfa. It is to be remembered 

 that rape can efficiently be used only as a pasture or soiling crop whereas 

 alfalfa may be mowed and cured as hay, thus doing away with loss in 

 time of disease epidemics which decimate the farm in forage consum- 

 ing animals. Alfalfa is a legume thus insuring nitrogenous fertility up- 

 keep, with its resultant higher yields as the years go on; herein rape 

 is at a serious disadvantage. 



That alfalfa should return a net profit on the acre of $184.92, charging 

 the corn (shelled basis) at 50c a bushel, the meat meal at $2.50 a hun- 

 dred, the alfalfa at $10.75 an acre, and crediting the hay at $10 a ton 

 and the hogs at $6 a hundred is somewhat surprising. This assumes that 

 the difference between the farm and market value (charged) of corn plus 

 the manure produced and its uniform distribution without leacliing loss, 

 offsets the labor of feeding, management and marketing of the hogs; risk 

 and interest on the hog; and the depreciation and interest on the equip- 

 ment. This is merely an assumption and is not given as a stated fact, 

 but nevertheless gives an understandable basis from which to reason and 

 figure. 



That 91.5 cents should be returned for every bushel of corn marketed 

 through the hogs on this alfalfa pasture, all the profits being centered upon 

 corn, is somewhat gratifying to those men who have long since appreciated 

 the high value of alfalfa pasture. 



That alfalfa needs supplement, although only in small amounts, is clear- 

 ly shown in a comparison of the two trials presented. In the first no 

 supplement was fed while in the second one pound of meat meal contain- 

 ing 60 per cent of protein was fed for approximately every 7% to 8 

 pounds of corn grain. The gains are shown to have cost the same, but 

 the close observer will readily see that where no supplement was fed the 

 pigs were carried to the light weight of 152 .pounds, where with sup- 

 plement in the same length of time they reached a weight of 215 pounds; 

 assuredly the putting on of this extra 63 pounds is somewhat expensive, 

 relatively speaking, costing in the neighborhood of $4.50 a hundred with 

 feeds charged at similar prices as when on alfalfa. When we take into 



