630 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Do not allow the clover in the hog pasture to "head out" at any time 

 during the season. About the tenth of May go into the pasture with a 

 mowing machine and mow one-third of it. Set the machine a little 

 high; next week mow another third, and the next week do likewise. 

 When you mow any part of this pasture, if there is any danger of it 

 smothering the growing clover you must take it off the ground. While 

 the clover is growing up on one of these thirds, the hogs have excellent 

 pasture on the other part of the field. If you will pursue this course, 

 you will have excellent green food for your hogs till the first of Oc- 

 tober and some years, later. These remarks are applicable to the second 

 year of a clover crop's life. 



Do not allow your hogs to run on a new crop of clover later than 

 the first of October, for they will injure the young clover, even if you 

 have them properly ringed. They have a way of getting the clover out 

 of the ground with their lower jaw, usually breaking the root off about 

 an inch below the surface and eating both root and top. 



We will now consider the proper course to proceed to get the hogs 

 to consume this clover. Any hog will eat some clover early in the 

 spring, but to get them to eat a quantity of it every day through the 

 entire summer is a different proposition. If your hogs have been kept 

 in a dry lot, it is not best to turn them on the clover for three or four 

 days until noon, if there is much dew. When the pasture is good and 

 the days begin to get warm, quit feeding corn in the feed lots, but take the 

 corn and hogs out in the clover field and feed them there. I prefer 

 feeding shelled corn in the pasture, as they will not chase each other 

 through the clover after an ear of corn. I always feed the corn to the 

 hogs on the side of the field farthest from the water. After they have 

 finished their little lunch of corn, they begin to eat clover, gradually 

 working across the field to the water, eating all the way. At ten o'clock 

 every hof will be at the water and in the shade. About two p. m. they 

 will take a fresh wallow and then take a short trip in the clover for their 

 dinner. About four p.m. every hog will go into the clover field to get 

 their supper and will be there at sundown, converting clover into pork 

 to the best of their ability. This is no dream or air-castle, but actual 

 facts. Do not feed more than two ears of corn per head once a day 

 and feed this in the morning, in the field as above stated. If you feed 

 heavily of corn they will eat but little clover. 



Several years ago, I had seventy head of stock hogs I had win- 

 tered. I put them on a good clover pasture, and from the fifteenth 

 of May until the last of July, I fed those hogs just one-half bushel of 

 shelled corn per day. They had no slop but plenty of good water to 

 drink and plenty to wallow in. These hogs would weigh about one 

 hundred and thirty pounds when I put them on the clover the latter 

 part of April and they were only in fair stock hog order then. About 

 the first of July one of my neighbors called and we walked out to see 

 the hogs in the clover field. After we looked at them, he said: "Why, 

 Joe, these hogs are fat enough to butcher." That was putting it a 

 little too strong, as they were not more than half fat, but growing 

 every day and keeping in good flesh. This is what I call producing pork 

 at the least possible expense for corn, etc. It is nothing to be ashamed 



