ELEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IV. 125 



preclude the possibility of presenting here a comprehensive and detailed 

 account of the profit-making possibilities of the business. In this con- 

 nection, some experimental data of the Missouri Experiment Station, where 

 various forage and grain crops were consumed by hogs, is given as an 

 example. The hogs used in the investigation weighed at the beginning 

 about one hundred pounds. The corn, where used as a supplement to 

 forage crops, was charged against the hogs at sixty cents a bushel; the 

 gains on hogs were credited at $6 per hundred-weight. Nothing was 

 charged for labor, and no credit fiven for fertilizer. An acre of blue 

 grass in the season of 1908, when pastured with hogs at the rate of four- 

 teen hogs per acre, for a period of 140 days, was worth, after deducting 

 the value of the corn used to supplement the pasture, $18.80. An acre 

 of clover pastured by twelve hogs, ninety days, under similar conditions, 

 yielded $37.59; rape, oats and clover, in 1909, ten hogs for seventy-eight 

 days, $22.02; oowpeas, twelve hogs for thirty-two days, $17.71; corn and 

 cowpeas, ten hogs for thirty-two days, $35.40. These figures speak for 

 themselves. Similar work will be conducted at the Illinois Agricultural 

 Experiment Station. 



While it is true that at times and under unusual conditions, which 

 have been particularly unfavorable for profitable livestock production, ex- 

 clusive grain growing has seemed as profitable and in some cases more 

 profitable, it is not true today, nor is it likely to be true until the demand 

 for corn, clover hay, alfalfa and other foods largely used in the production 

 of meat comes into more general use in the human dietary. These crops, 

 admittedly the most natural and profitable on corn belt farms, are suited 

 primarily to livestock production, and as long as they are grown, they, 

 together with the by-products of many other farm crops, will be used 

 largely for livestock production either in this or other states or coun- 

 tries. 



Intelligent systems of livestock husbandry are the most profitable sys- 

 tems of farming under conditions likely to prevail for a long series of 

 years, and doubtless indefinitely. Then, too, in considering a question of 

 such significance, only averages extending over a series of years equally 

 favorable to grain growing on the one hand and livestock production on 

 the other should be considered conclusive. 



2. Livestock farming furnishes the opportunity to many intelligent 

 workmen for continuous remunerative work in the country. In other 

 words, livestock farming calls for greater intelligence and skill in the 

 farm laborer, while such systems of farming distribute the work to be 

 done more evenly throughout the year. Some systems of livestock farm- 

 ing, especially the more intensive forms, like dairying, furnish a greater 

 amount of work. Looking at the subject from the standpoint of public 

 good, therefore, it would seem highly desirable to encourage systems of 

 livestock production, particularly as population increases. 



A system of exclusive grain farming will necessarily find a large place 

 in the agriculture of the corn belt, and no one should rejoice in this fact 

 more than the livestock producer. Exclusive grain growing increases 

 the available supply of feeds used in animal production on the one hand, 



