No. 4.] SWINE BREEDING AND FEEDING. 209 



of feeding for the next fifty. Our animals are weighed once 

 a week before feeding, to ascertain the weekly results of the 

 food supplied. We find that the expense of feeding from the 

 first fifty pounds up to seventy-five pounds live weight costs 

 us about two and a half cents a pound ; that, if we take the 

 next fifty pounds, from seventy-five to one hundred and 

 twenty-five or one hundred and thirty, the expense runs up 

 to three and a half and four cents ; and that, when we 

 exceed one hundred and seventy-five pounds, we cannot pro- 

 duce a pound of pork for less than five or six cents live 

 weight. So that, when the meat market is as low as we 

 have it in our section, getting probably only five and a half 

 cents for dressed weight, we lose money every day ; and it 

 is no economy, with the price of pork in our market, to go 

 beyond from one hundred and seventy-five to one hundred 

 and eighty pounds live weight. If the market is exception- 

 ally high, as it is at times, when we can get six or seven cents 

 per pound, we may make a little money ; but of course there 

 is always a reduction in the percentage of gain from the 

 earlier stages of growth. 



In regard to the materials fed, I will state, in the first 

 place, that we make three stages of growth. That is, we 

 give for every stage a certain proportion of corn and milk. 

 When we start in with animals weighing twenty pounds we 

 give usually with one quart of skim-milk or creamery milk 

 two ounces of corn meal ; when they reach a weight of 

 seventy-five pounds, we give" four ounces of corn meal ; 

 when they have reached a weight of one hundred and sixty 

 pounds, we give six ounces of corn meal. The reason is 

 this. In the early stage of growth we try to imitate as 

 much as possible the mother's milk in composition. Now, 

 milk as a ration is expressed in the scientific way as one to 

 two ; that is, one part of digestible nitrogenous matter 

 against two parts of digestible non-nitrogenous matter 

 (carbohydrates). We increase the carbohydrates, as 

 starch, sugar, etc., as the animals increase in their growth. 

 In the early stages we wish to increase the weight of 

 muscle, and for the perfection of the animal ; in the other 

 stages we feed to furnish the fat throughout the entire 

 body, because when an animal has reached its full size it 



