152 HOW TO PEED YOUR HOGS 



corn, but they need supplements. Meat and potatoes for humans 

 is comparable to meatmeal and potatoes for pigs. Both are good 

 combinations. The same supplements may be used as with corn. 

 Milk* works well with potatoes. Potatoes are a healthful feed, and 

 make a good quality of pork. Potatoes should be thoroughly cooked. 

 Raw potatoes are not relished, and are not digested as they should 

 be. Thorough cooking is necessary to break down the starch gran- 

 ules and the cell covering so as to make the starch more easily 

 accessible and thoroughly digestible. Cooked potatoes may be 

 considered a succulent feed for pigs, and used as such. The 

 cooking process increases their palatability. It takes from 375 

 to 450 pounds of potatoes when cooked to equal 100 pounds of 

 grain, like corn. To give the best results potatoes should be fed 

 with other feeds of a more highly concentrated character, particu- 

 larly those that contain less water, for best results, and cooked 

 potatoes, being a bulky feed from the standpoint of the water con- 

 tained, "should be fed liberally, probably three times a day or else 

 kept before the pigs almost continually, so that they can get enough 

 to satisfy. Potatoes are the most valuable, pound for pound, of any 

 of the roots from the standpoint of their ability to save grain. They 

 replace corn and similar grains in the pig's ration just as they re- 

 place bread in the human diet. 



Peanuts. Whole peanuts are especially fine for pigs. In the 

 southern states they are used extensively. Peanuts are rich in fat 

 up to 45 and even 50 percent, and hence, though highly palatable 

 and much relished by pigs, produce a soft, oily pork, which is 

 docked 'from 50 cents to $2 per cwt., on the live market. The market- 

 able pigs that come from peanut sections are discriminated against 

 by packers, and such discrimination of course has a basis in fact. 

 Soft, oily pork in the packing houses is objectionable. The unfor- 

 tunate part about the whole situation is that even when pigs are fed 

 corn and milk in the peanut districts, when they go to market they 

 are discriminated against, because buyers have no way of telling 

 whether the pigs as judged on foot have been fed peanuts or not, 

 and, as a result, just because the pigs come from peanut sections 

 they are discredited along with their peanut-fed brothers and sis- 

 ters. Peanut meal, which remains as residue after the oil has been 

 extracted, when fed in the cornbelt alongside of corn, produces a 

 satisfactory pork product. The Iowa station has done some work 

 on this, and found that corn and peanut meal from which the fat 

 had been extracted, when fed with bluegrass, made, satisfactory 

 pork, not quite so satisfactory as corn and meatmeal tankage but 

 nevertheless salable and satisfactory. The oil is too valuable for 

 human consumption to feed to pigs as such. With harvested pea- 

 nuts it should be extracted, but where hogs do the harvesting then 

 economic considerations, as regards labor saved, enter into the situ- 

 ation, and make it profitable for the whole peanuts to be fed to hogs 

 as the hogs do their own gathering and harvesting. Hence in cer- 

 tain sections of the south the unharvested whole peanut kernels are 

 fed in the shell to pigs. 



