4 72 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



will eat up clean twice a day. When pigs are six to eight weeks old cut 

 down on sow's feed, slowly but surely down to one-half ear per day 

 and water to drink, then she will wean her pigs. 



Now, right here is the place that more pigs are runted or stunted than 

 at any other time in the life of the bunch. The farmer is busy laying 

 by crops, making hay, harvesting or thresh'ng, and then is when the 

 pigs are neglected. Don't do it. Fifty cents' worth of feed per head, in 

 addition to what the average farmer feeds the first five or six weeks, 

 just after weaning time, will add from three to five dollars per head at 

 selling time. I do this every year and still let them run in the same 

 pasture and never feed brcod sows much; are never fat, and it is a root 

 hog or die game with them from now on until pumpkin time again. But 

 I keep sows nose rung all the time: it is both safe and economical. The 

 drier the summer the more you must slop. 



Now when the corn gets well dented turn all the young hogs r'ght in 

 the cornfield. Smallfields are preferable. Divide or fence off a few acres. 

 Cross fences can be made with a post every four or five rods, and use good 

 stout hill of corn for other posts and twenty-eight inch woven wire. 



Keep up that everlasting slopping until the hogs have got to tearing the 

 corn right good, th^n decrease the amount of slop and gradually use all 

 water instead of slops. If there is running water in the field, so much the 

 better; they will do fine and eat lots of stuff like parsley vines and late 

 weeds that would be lost entirely with any other process of feeding. If 

 you pursue this plan no lessons or professors will be required to tell about 

 cutworms, corn-root worms, wire worms, corn-root louse, etc.; they will 

 disappear. 



Keep running them in the corn as long as weather holds, or until winter 

 begins. If you get your last field done by the middle of December better 

 not turn them in another; they will clean up every grain of corn. After 

 like feeds somewhere else if they are allowed to go back the memory 

 of the great times they had tearing down that corn still lingers and they 

 will continiTe to go back to the field where they have spent their most hap- 

 py and profitable days. After this feed any way you want to so the hog 

 gets all the corn and water he wants at least once a day. Feed oftener, 

 er any way you choose, it doesn't make any difference so he has a chance 

 at the corn. Let the hog determine how much he will eat. You can't 

 affect or change that and get any better results. Always furnish a dry 

 place to sleep. Get all the coal and wood ashes possible, or charcoal. It is 

 not necessary to pen up fattening hogs. 



I have never used any dip of any kind. Never used medicine of any 

 kird; neither oil meal, tankage, blood meal, condition powder, or stock 

 feed of any kind, make or description. I never used a feeding flour but 

 can't see any objection to a cement floor, if it is left rough so hogs would 

 not slip. 



Keep from running young hogs, if you can. As long as the weather is 

 good haul corn out in the field or pasture and feed all you want to, and 

 any way you choose. Once a week, or twice a week, or every day, or two 

 or three times a day. T think the hog rather likes to go after his feed. 



