260 FEEDING AND MANAGEMENT 



SCRUBS NOT ECONOMICAL. 



The legitimate place of the hog, or any other meat-produc- 

 ing animal, is to turn cheap feeds into valuable meat, and the 

 more feed a hog can turn into pork during its short lifetime, the 

 more valuable it is to its owner. Professor Burns of the Texas 

 Experiment Station fed six scrubs and six grade Poland-Chinas 

 on the same kind of ration. So far as amount of feed for 100 

 pounds gain in weight was concerned, there was practically no 

 difference, but that is only one side of the question. While 

 the scrubs were making 850 pounds gain in weight, the grades 

 made 1130 pounds. It required no more labor to feed the 

 grades than the scrubs, it cost no more for a pound of pork in 

 the grades than in the scrubs, yet the grades manufactured 280 

 pounds more pork than the scrubs. From the standpoint of 

 labor alone the grades were the more profitable, but this is not 

 all. When sent to market, the packer paid $6.00 per hundred 

 weight for the scrubs, and $6.65 for the grades, and as a result 

 the grades showed a profit of $1.48 per hog more than the scrubs. 

 The scrub has outlived his usefulness, and there is clearly no 

 place for him in present day agriculture. 



Scrub Methods. The scrub, unlike the poet, can be made as 

 well as born. Methods of feeding and management which pro- 

 duce a pig weighing from 100 to 150 pounds at 10 months old, 

 when it ought to weigh at least 300 pounds, may properly be 

 described as scrub methods. We may have the best of blood in 

 our herd, but fail to secure any advantage from it through our 

 carelessness or indifference. To effectively eradicate the scrub 

 requires intelligent methods of both breeding and feeding, and 

 the scrub pig will disappear when scrub methods are abandoned. 

 The principles underlying the successful handling of hogs have 

 been pretty fully discussed in the preceding pages of this and 

 other chapters of the book. 



