632 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



field ready for their little drink of slop and two ears of corn. If we 

 were a little late in going to our work some mornings, they would be 

 a short distance from the feeding place eating clover for "dear life." 

 The way these hogs grew was a surprise to us all. About the fifteenth 

 of August, we began to feed a little more corn. Near the first of Sep- 

 tember they were placed in a small lot having plenty of shade and run- 

 ning water and given all the corn, they would eat for seven weeks. 

 They took on flesh rapidly. Just then the Franco-Prussian war broke 

 out and the price of fat hogs came up, and father sold those hogs for 

 the modest sum of nine dollars per hundred and delivered them at the 

 scales on his farm. A number of these hogs weighed more than four 

 hundred and fifty pounds. The entire lot averaged better than four 

 hundred pounds. Besides the corn raised on the place in 1869, there 

 was a crib of eight hundred bushels that father had purchased at the 

 rate of three bushels for one dollar. When you have time you can 

 figure up the profit on the grain fed to these hogs. The same results 

 can be obtained in Iowa. Those hogs did not need more than four acres 

 of that clover. There was enough in that field for two hundred head 

 of hogs. 



The above facts and others I am cognizant of leads me to say that 

 when the farmers of Iowa adopt this better method of feeding and 

 caring for their hogs they will realize that in the year of 1907 swine 

 raising in Iowa was only in its infancy. 



PROFITS FROM SPRAYING POTATOES. 

 From U. S. Department of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin No. 251. 



The profitableness of thorough spraying to protect potatoes against 

 fungus diseases and insect enemies was very strikingly shown in ex- 

 periments reported by F. C. Stewart and associates, of the New York 

 State Station. The experiments have been made under the direct super- 

 vision of the station or in co-operation with growers in different parts 

 of the state. In general thorough spraying with Bordeaux mixture 

 was very effective against blight, rot, and flea-beetle. 



While in a few cases all loss from these causes could not be pre- 

 vented even by thorough spraying, in every case w^ihere there was a 

 severe outbreak of blight enough good was done to repay all expendi- 

 ture, both of money and of time. Generally, spraying was very profit- 

 able. Of those whose tests were reported to the station, thirty growers 

 made a net profit of $10,000 from spraying. 



In fourteen co-operative experiments, covering 180 acres, made in 

 1904, the average increase in yield due to spraying was 62^ bushels 

 per acre; the cost of spraying was $4.98 per acre; the cost per acre for 

 each spraying, 93 cents; and the net profit per acre, $24.86. Similar 

 and almost equally profitable results were obtained in six experiments 

 made in 1903. 



Not only were there gains in yield due mainly "to lengthening the 

 time of growth by preventing foliage destruction by late blight," but 

 the sprayed potatoes, being more mature, were of better cooking quality. 



