CHAPTER 



FEED AND CARE OF SWINE 



Due primarily to the economy with which it produces meat, the hog is 

 found on far more American farms than are either beef cattle, or sheep. 

 On the well organized general farm, hogs utilize the household garbage 

 and any dairy by-products, as well as saving the waste in the grain 

 fields. On dairy farms, except where whole milk is sold, pork production 

 must be an important farm enterprise, if full value is to be realized from 

 the skim milk, buttermilk, or whey. On beef farms, the hog occupies a no 

 less important place, for much of the profit in cattle fattening comes 

 from the pork produced by the pigs following the fattening steers. 



In some sections of the country, especially in the cotton belt of the 

 South, the merits of the hog are not yet fully appreciated, and farmers 

 raise no pork, even for their own needs, but buy it at considerable ex- 

 pense on the local market. On an efficiently managed farm, usually 

 enough pigs can be raised at a minimum of expense to provide the pork 

 for the family. 



In the economy with which he converts the gross products of the farm 

 into meat the pig excels all other farm animals. Garbage, vegetable 

 and other waste, green forage, and grain are all voraciously consumed 

 and quickly and economically converted into flesh. So swift is his 

 career that he usually breaks into life with the spring flowers, plays the 

 gormand in summer, and yields his unctuous body a sacrifice to men's 

 necessities with the dropping of the leaves in fall. The pig is the poor 

 man's reliance and the opulent farmer's gold mine. Of all domestic 

 animals he is the most prolific, and his possibilities in multiplying are 

 the delight of the city man in his ecstatic dreams of land owning and 

 raising his meager investment in a single mother pig to the nth power 

 thru her precocious progeny. 



1012. Essentials in feed and care of brood sows. In securing a good 

 profit from hogs nothing is of greater importance than proper feed and 

 care for the brood sows and boars. Each year thousands of farmers are 

 grievously disappointed at farrowing time by seeing their possible profits 

 vanish when their sows produce unsatisfactory litters. Either the 

 litters are small or the pigs are so weak that they die, or survive only to 

 be unprofitable runts. In most cases such results are due to a lack of 

 proper feed and care for the sows. Yet the needs of brood sows are 

 relatively simple and easily met. 



The most important points in the feeding and care of brood sows are : 

 (1) well-balanced rations, which will furnish plenty of protein, and 



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