506 



Feeds and Feeding. 



Iowa farmers feed not less than 100,000,000 bu. of corn annually 

 to pigs. To shell and grind this amount at 3 cts. per bu. would cost 

 $3,000,000, besides a vast amount of labor. And in most cases the 

 meal so made would have less value than the ear corn from which it 

 is made! 



823. Cooking feed. The early agricultural authorities uniformly 

 and strongly advocated cooking feed for swine. The first definite 

 results in opposition came from the Maine Agricultural College 1 in 

 1876, which reported that as the average of 9 years of continuous 

 experimentation it had found that 89.9 Ibs. of raw corn meal was 

 as valuable for putting gains on fattening pigs as was 100 Ibs. of 

 corn meal that had been cooked. In not a single trial at this Col- 

 lege in the 9 years did a given weight of corn meal on being cooked 

 by steam prove as satisfactory as the same weight of uncooked meal. 

 These results were so at variance with popular opinion that the mat- 

 ter was soon tried out at a number of stations, some of the findings 

 of which are as follows: 



Results of feeding cooked and uncooked grain to "fattening hogs. 



*4thAn.Rpt. +2dAn. Rpt. t Rpt. 1885. gCoburn, Swine in America. ||Rpt. 1891. 



The trials above reported, which are but a fraction of all that 

 have been made in this country, show that in most cases there is an 

 actual loss of food value by cooking the various grains for fattening 

 swine. Some few feeds, such as potatoes, are improved by cooking, 

 but as a rule there is no gain and usually a loss by such opera- 

 tion. (334, 337) 



824. Soaking feed. Rommel 2 has summarized the work of the 

 stations with wet and dry feeds for swine. In some cases the feed 



1 An. Rpt. Trustees Maine State Col. of Agr., 1876. 



2 U. S. Dept. Agr., Bur. Anim. Indus., Bui. 47. 



