358 The Feeding of Animals 



twenty -five years pork prodactioii has offered more 

 encouraging inducements to the home consumx^tion of 

 grain than has beef production. 



Within recent years there has been a great change 

 in the methods of pig feeding and in the character of 

 the animal when placed upon the market. This is 

 emphatically true of the eastern and middle states, 

 where pork is grown wholly for local consumption. 

 Formerly good feeders were not supposed to slaughter 

 a pig under three hundred pounds carcass weight, 

 and many animals dressed four hundred pounds when 

 taken to the market, this size being secured only after 

 a feeding period of twelve to eighteen months. Pork 

 of this character was regarded as well adapted to pack- 

 ing. At the present time the demand of the local 

 markets is for small carcasses weighing not over one 

 hundred and fifty pounds, and supplying the maxi- 

 mum proportion of lean cuts. This change is in the 

 direction of greater profits for the farmer, as he has 

 learned, because the food expenditure required for the 

 production of small carcasses is much less per unit of 

 weight than under the old system, when the feeding 

 was continued during a longer period. Pigs properlj^ 

 fed are now wisely turned off at the age of a few 

 months, excepting, perhaps, in those localities where a 

 slow early growth is cheaply secured on pasturage. 



CHARACTER OF THE GROW^TH IN PORK PRODUCTION 



The modern hog is empliatically a fat -producing 

 organism, having a capacity in this particular greatly 



