984 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



was almost universal. Pigs were kept over winter with little if 

 any increase in weight. The feeders did not seem to discover 

 that this food given to store animals was even worse than lost, 

 for the animals took on an unthrifty habit, contracted their pow- 

 ers of digestion, and required, in spring, nearly a month of 

 good feeding to recover from this penurious winter feeding. A 

 thrifty animal, with good management, progresses without check 

 from its first to its last day. When a little attention was given 

 to the matter, it became evident that the profit of growing meat 

 was to be found in pushing the young animal as rapidly as pos- 

 sible, that it cost the least to produce a pound of growth in the 

 earliest period of life, and this cost in food grew proportionately 

 greater as the animal increased in age and size. This, then, is 

 the great fact underlying all successful feeding of young animals. 

 " Experiments were tried in 186668, at the Michigan Ag- 

 ricultural College Farm. In the first, three, and in the last, six 

 pigs were fed upon milk. The pigs were from four to six 

 weeks old at the commencement of the experiment. The aver- 

 age amount of milk required to produce a pound, live weight, 

 was: First week, 6.76 pounds; second week, 7.75 pounds; third 

 week, 12.28 pounds; fourth week, 10.42 pounds. Professor 

 Miles says the cause of its requiring a greater amount of food 

 the third week is explained by a 'derangement of the diges- 

 tive organs during this week, as shown in a tendency to con- 

 stipation.' He calls attention to the fact that ' the milk to 

 produce a pound of live weight constantly increases.' After end- 

 ing the experiment in 1868 on milk, he continued it upon corn- 

 meal. Pigs and food were weighed as before, and the feeding 

 continued twenty weeks, divided into five periods of four weeks 

 each. Amount of corn-meal required for a pound live weight 

 was: First period, 3.81 pounds; second, 4.05 pounds; third, 

 4.22 pounds ; fourth, 5.24 pounds; fifth period, 5.98 pounds. 

 Another experiment was tried in 1869 with a larger number of 

 pigs, with nearly the same result, in regard to amount of meal 

 required to make a pound of live weight, and showing, practi- 

 cally, the same increase in the food required to make each ad- 

 ditional pound live weight as the pigs grow older or heavier. 



