SWINE HOUSING AND FATTENING. 989 



can be fitted for market with quite a short period of summer 

 feeding. 



When you do begin feeding, I advise that you push and get 

 as much gain as possible, and at the same time watch the mar- 

 kets closely. I have known profitable sales made after a very 

 short period of feeding, and often by holding a little too long a 

 drop in the price takes all the profit from several weeks' feeding. 



Keep salt and ashes before your hogs all the time when fatten- 

 ing them, and if you can buy charcoal feed them what they will 

 eat of it. Our best feeders buy a wagon-load of it at a time. 



Even when hogs are to be fed for a December or January 

 market it is best to begin early as the green corn will do to feed, 

 for it has been demonstrated over and over that pork can be 

 made much cheaper in warm than in cold weather. I have be- 

 fore me the report of a lot of hogs that were put up to feed in 

 October, when the weather was warm, and the gain they made 

 paid eighty cents a bushel for the corn. The first week in No- 

 vember, the weather being colder, the gain paid sixty-two cents 

 per bushel for the corn. As the cold increased the gain grew 

 less, and the last week in November the gain paid but twenty- 

 five cents a bushel for the corn. Another lot was then put up, 

 and during December the gain paid just twenty-five cents a 

 bushel for the corn consumed. The middle of January the 

 weather grew colder, and another weighing showed that the 

 gain paid only five cents a bushel for the corn eaten, and the 

 week following, with mercury ranging to ten degrees below zero, 

 they made no gain whatever. 



How much Pork from a Bushel of Corn. There 

 have been many and long-continued experiments made to ascer- 

 tain how much gain can be reasonably expected from a bushel 

 of corn when fed to good stock, under good management, and the 

 average is found to be not far from ten pounds. This estimate 

 does not include the corn fed in rearing the pig, but only that 

 fed during the fattening process. At ten pounds per bushel it 

 is very easy to calculate what we are getting for our corn, as 

 each cent a pound for the pork represents ten cents a bushel 

 for the corn. 



