260 FEEDING AND MANAGEMENT 
SCRUBS NOT ECONOMICAL. 
The legitimate place of the hog, or any other meat-produc- 
ing animal, is to turn cheap feeds into valuable meat, and the 
more feed a hog can turn into pork during its short lifetime, the 
more valuable it is to its owner. Professor Burns of the Texas 
Experiment Station fed six serubs and six grade Poland-Chinas 
on the same kind of ration. So far as amount of feed for 100 
pounds gain in weight was concerned, there was practically no 
difference, but that is only one side of the question. While 
the scrubs were making 550 pounds gain in weight, the grades 
made 1130 pounds. It required no more labor to feed the 
grades than the scrubs, it cost no more for a pound of pork in 
the grades than in the scrubs, vet the grades manufactured 280 
pounds more pork than the scrubs. From the standpoint of 
labor alone the grades were the more profitable, but this is not 
all. When sent to market, the packer paid $6.00 per hundred 
weight for the scrubs, and $6.65 for the grades, and as a result 
the grades showed a profit of $1.48 per hog more than the scrubs. 
The scrub has outlived his usefulness, and there is clearly no 
place for him in present day agriculture. 
Scrub Methods.—The scrub, unlike the poet, can be made as 
well as born. Methods of feeding and management which prv- 
duce a pig weighing from 100 to 150 pounds at 10 months old, 
when it ought to weigh at least 300 pounds, may properly be 
described as scrub methods. We may have the best of blood in 
our herd, but fail to secure any advantage from it through our 
carelessness or indifference. To effectively eradicate the scrub 
requires intelligent methods of both breeding and feeding, and 
the scrub pig will disappear when scrub methods are abandoned. 
The principles underlying the successful handling of hogs have 
been pretty fully discussed in the preceding pages of this and 
other chapters of the book. 
