324 



Pork Production 



sweet potatoes could not be profitably grown, stored, 

 and fed to pigs by hand. 



Table CLVI. — Sweet Potatoes, Hand-Fed, versus Corn 



That sweet potatoes will give fairly good results when 

 the pigs are allowed to do the harvesting is indicated by 

 an experiment by Newman and Pickett ^ at the South 

 Carolina Experiment Station. In this trial, pigs averag- 

 ing 162 pounds at the beginning made an average daily 

 gain of .86 pound on sweet potatoes alone, the experi- 

 ment covering thirty-three days. In the same, trial, a 

 similar group of three pigs fed corn alone gained 1.39 

 pounds daily. The amount of feed required to produce 

 100 pounds of gain was 3245 pounds of sweet potatoes 

 and 602 of corn respectively. The authors estimated the 

 yield of sweet potatoes and concluded that one acre could 

 be credited with 369 pounds of pork. At the Alabama 

 Experiment Station, Duggar ^ fed two shotes grazing 

 sweet potatoes a grain ration of 2 parts corn and 1 part 

 ground cowpeas. In the thirty-three days of the trial, 

 the pigs made 100 pounds of gain from 313 pounds of 

 the grain mixtiu-e, which indicated only fair returns 

 from the sweet potatoes eaten in addition. 



1 BuU. 122. 2 Ibid., 122. 



