584 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



before cold weather sets in. If the price of cattle was high and corn was 

 high I most assuredly would let the other fellow feed them, but if the 

 stock cattle was cheap and corn was cheap I would feed them a little 

 through the winter, and as it came near spring time I would increase the 

 feed and feed them until the month of June, I believe, not later thati 

 July. I would aim to get my stock as good as possible so when they grew 

 age of the right character she cannot only be maintained but will gain 

 up and fattened out they would be the regular beef type; have a straight 

 top and under line, be broad, thick and heavy. This would be my idea, I 

 am simply giving you my experience along this line as best I can. 



'7 

 Address by O. P. Hedge, before Mahaska County Farmers' institute. 



I have lived in the city most of my life, but I find life on the farm the 

 most pleasant. I expect to remain there and what I say to-day will be 

 positively my own experience. I have been on the farm handling hogs 

 and cattle. It is not necessary for me to say to you that in starting a herd 

 of hogs that we must have the very best stock, that we must not be satis- 

 fied without the best, and my experience has been that the earlier you 

 have your pigs the better, and that they should be cared for in a simple 

 business-like way as you would take care of any stock until they are large 

 enough to follow their mother, and my experience has been that blue grass 

 pasture is about as good a thing as I ever had hogs run on. While I 

 am well aware clover is a good pasture for hogs, but it is not always con- 

 venient for us to have that. I find I can have a blue grass pasture easier 

 and handy to the house. Some of us find we cannot always have clover 

 as we would like to have it. Now these hogs as they run on the farm 

 can be fed corn with grass; not to any great amount until the new corn 

 comes in and as it has been said feed the new corn as soon as possible, 

 and give them all that they can eat conveniently and take care of them 

 in the right way, and by the first of December or the middle or first 

 of the year they are large enough, and to my mind then it is the time to 

 sell your hogs. I am satisfied it does not pay ordinarily unless you are 

 well fixed, and the average farmer here to-day is not well fixed to keep 

 hogs through the winter and make it successful. It is not often you can 

 keep hogs that will gain as rapidly through the winter as in the fall, and 

 as soon as you can get rid of a hog at $2.25 or $2.50 I believe it the best 

 policy to sell the hog early and get him off your hands. And besides 

 the corn field must always determine the size of your hog lot and the 

 number of your hogs. I do not think it is profitable to buy corn and raise* 

 hogs. If you can raise your hogs and raise your corn you have a good 

 profit but I don't believe it pays generally to buy hogs and buy corn and 

 feed them. If you have a good corn crop you can buy hogs without any 

 trouble and feed your corn to your hogs, but I have always made it a rule 

 not to raise more hogs than I had corn to feed. I have always liked to 

 handle cattle. I have never thought I was a success by any means handling 

 hogs; I have always liked to handle cattle. I want to tell you there is 

 nothing that will grow a calf like its mother's milk. You will have men 



