206 RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS IN SWINE FEEDING 



is injured by exclusive meal feeding will be re-fleeted in the 

 relative feeding value shown by roots and grain, and this fact 

 renders extreme variations quite possible. 



Generally speaking, it may be said that sugar beets possess 

 the highest feeding value among ordinary roots, and are most 

 readily eaten by 'swine. Mangels, Swede turnips, and carrots 

 may be counted practically equal in value, but hogs eat mangels 

 with greater relish than they eat turnips. 



Potatoes. At the Wisconsin Experiment Station, 441 

 pounds of potatoes, cooked and fed to swine, proved equal to 

 100 pounds of corn meal. In " Feeds and Feeding," Henry 

 summarizes Danish experiments, where 400 pounds of potatoes 

 proved equal to 100 pounds of mixed meal. In connection with 

 these investigations, Professor Henry says : " In general, we 

 may say that a bushel of corn is worth four and one-half bushels 

 of potatoes for fattening purposes when cooked and fed with 

 corn meal. Potatoes may have a higher value than the rating 

 here given, in furnishing variety in ration to growing animals." 



Potatoes must be cooked for swine, and this item of expense 

 cancels some of the advantage which they possess over roots as 

 a, feed for swine. 



The sweet potato contains more starch and less protein than 

 ordinary potatoes. In the South, it is used quite commonly for 

 hog feeding. The Florida Station (Bulletin 90) reports a four 

 weeks' test with hogs which were nearly full grown. They were 

 fed shorts and sweet potatoes in the proportion of one pound of 

 shorts to between five and six pounds of sweet potatoes. The 

 gains were large, and if the gain in weight is valued at five 

 cents per pound, sweet potatoes would show a value of $10.70 

 per ton. At the same station, young pigs lost weight on sweet 

 potatoes alone, and hogs weighing a little over 100 pounds each 

 at the commencement of the test made an average daily gain per 

 head of slightly over half a pound. In the last mentioned test, 

 the sweet potatoes showed a value of $3.00 per ton when the 



