104 HOW TO FEED YOUR HOGS 



daily, and they had little better appetites, eating practically 2 

 pounds of grain per head daily and required 1.297 pounds of 

 corn plus 10 pounds of bone meal plus 1 pound of salt for 100 

 pounds of gain, a total of 1308 pounds of feed approximate- 

 ly. There was still something wrong because eight-months-old pigs 

 at the close should weigh more than these weighed, or, namely, more 

 than 65 pounds. 



The addition of 60 percent protein meatmeal tankage made a 

 vast difference. The pigs gained 12 times as fast as where they re- 

 ceived corn alone, making more gains in one day than the corn-alone 

 pigs made in 12, or 1.21 pounds daily. Also they ate three times as 

 much feed, or 4.40 pounds of corn plus .58 of a pound of tankage 

 plus a little salt a total of almost 5 pounds, or, to be exact, 4.98 

 pounds ; requiring for each 100 pounds of gain 366 pounds of corn, 

 plus 47 pounds of tankage, plus a little more than .1 of a pound of 

 salt, or, practically speaking, 413 pounds of feed for every 100 

 pounds of gain. 



These pigs weighed 226 pounds at the same age as the corn-alone 

 pigs or the corn-and-bonemeal pigs, or 226 as compared to 57 and 

 65 pounds, respectively. Certainly there must be something in 

 meatmeal tankage that supplies the deficiencies of corn ; there must 

 also be something in the corn and salt ration that is inadequate. 



To study this matter more fully, let us consider what we mean 

 by a complete ration, a ration that is adequate, particularly for 

 growing pigs and suckling sows with litters. 



A Complete Ration. A complete ration is relatively complex. 

 It is made up of many factors, many of these are unknown chem- 

 ically, unfortunately, although we know their action. Chemical 

 analyses, therefore, although difficult to make, are, ordinarily 

 speaking, only to be considered as general guides. Why this is so 

 we shall make plain shortly. Feeds vary considerably, particularly 

 pasture feeds. Young bluegrass, for instance, may come out in the 

 early spring running as high as 40 percent protein in the young dry 

 matter ; and later it may contain only 10 percent of protein in the 

 old dry matter; that is, after it becomes dry, hard and woody. 

 This protein in the mature plant is certainly not the same as the 

 protein in the young, tender, luscious green growth. There are 

 proteins and proteins, so many hundreds of thousands of them that 

 it is almost impossible to conceive of their complexity. Actually 

 different combinations are difficult to work out, unless they are ex- 

 perimentally tried out, and it has been our policy at Ames for a 

 number of years to try out various combinations in practice and 

 see what they will do, and then learn from our experiences with 

 them. 



Let us remember before passing to the factors that make up an 

 adequate diet that a ration may be good because of the absence or 

 presence of an undesirable or desirable quality respectively, or bad 



