Fattening for Market 411 



it is used to excess. In the many tests that have been 

 conducted with alfalfa pasture or hay, without grain, it is 

 only rarely that the pigs have made any gain. The best 

 results have so far been obtained where the pigs were 

 given grain in a self-feeder and so not forced to consume 

 any more alfalfa than they wished. When such supple- 

 ments as skim-milk or tankage are available at reasonable 

 rates, they may be profitably used in addition to the 

 alfalfa but of course in smaller quantities than when no 

 alfalfa is used. Bran, like alfalfa hay, carries too much 

 bulk to be desirable feed for fattening pigs and in addition 

 is very expensive on the basis of the nutrients contained. 

 Middlings and shorts can be depended on for a consider- 

 able part of the supplemental protein if they may be 

 procured for little more than the price of the grain fed, 

 and the distance to haul is not too great. Linseed-oil 

 meal is used to a considerable extent in the North Central 

 states, but even if flax-growing should assume consider- 

 able proportions in the Northwest, the price of oil meal will 

 never be low here on account of its value to the dairy- 

 man. Soybean meal is being imported in small quantities 

 from Manchuria and it is barely possible that it may be 

 unloaded on the Pacific Coast at a price which will make it 

 available as a supplemental pig feed. Since soybean meal 

 has about the same percentage of protein as linseed-oil 

 meal and very nearly the same carbohydrate equivalent, 

 it is evident that it should be procured at practically 

 the same price, or less than the latter, else there is no 

 inducement for using it in preference to American-grown 

 products. Cotton-seed meal has a third more protein, 

 as well as a little more digestible carbohydrates than the 

 two above named meals but because of the poisonous effect 

 it exerts when fed in large quantities to pigs, it should not 



