HOG 



WOOD SUPERIOR TO ALL MATERIALS FOR 

 HOG-HOUSE CONSTRUCTION 



A good hog house should be warm in winter, cool in 

 summer and not subject to great changes in temperature 

 during the day and night. Buildings of wood meet these 

 requirements as shown by an experiment made at the Iowa 

 State College of Agriculture. An account of this experi- 

 ment is given in the bulletin on "Movable Hog Houses" 

 mentioned on page 5. 



Four houses of the "A" type, two of wooden construc- 

 tion and two of sheet metal, were used in the test. One 

 house of each kind had a floor area of about 6 feet by 8 feet, 

 while that in the other two was about 5 feet by 7 feet. The 

 object of the test was to place these houses out in actual use 

 and find the relative warmth and amount of change in tem- 

 perature inside during the day or night. They were placed 

 in a row so as to allow the sun to shine directly upon the 

 roof, sides and south end. 



Each house contained three hogs of approximately 150 

 pounds average weight. These animals were kept in the 

 houses for eight days with careful attention as to food and 

 water. At the end of this time it was found that the three 

 hogs in the large wooden house had gained 30 pounds, while 

 those in the large metal one had gained only 26 pounds. In 

 the smaller wooden house the three hogs had gained 25 

 pounds as compared with 20 pounds in the metal one. 



The average range in temperatures in the wooden 

 houses through a period of twenty-four hours was 21 de- 

 grees in the large one and 15.8 in the smaller. In the metal 

 houses the corresponding average range was 36 degrees for 

 the large one and 29.2 for the smaller. During this same 

 period the temperature outside had an average range of 

 20.7 degrees. 



The fact that the hogs in the wooden houses gained 

 more in the same time than those in the metal ones, when all 

 conditions were the same except for the lower range of 

 temperature in the wooden houses, is a convincing proof of 

 the superiority of wood in hog-house construction. 



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