FORAGE CROPS FOR HOGS IN KANSAS AND OKLAHOMA. 47 
SYSTEMS OF HOG FEEDING. 
Nearly every farmer who has succeeded with hogs has a feeding 
system of his own, yet there are some features common to all. A 
good illustration of the successful handling of hogs on a small farm 
is that employed by a man in northern Oklahoma on an 80-acre farm. 
He has his whole farm fenced hog-tight and turns off annually from 
it an average of 100 head of hogs. All these are of his own raising 
and are grown and fitted for market with the crops raised on his 
farm, with the exception that a little corn is occasionally bought. 
He has 5 acres of alfalfa and each autumn sows 5 acres of wheat for 
late fall and winter pasture. In the spring he sows oats to supple- 
ment the wheat and alfalfa. The wheat is sown at the rate of 14 
bushels to the acre, about September 1, and furnishes pasture in the 
fall, when alfalfa pasture is getting short, and for a part of the 
winter. The wheat will also furnish some pasture for the hogs in 
the spring. The oats tide over until the alfalfa is ready for pasture. 
Thus, green feed is furnished for the greater part of the year. The 
rest of his 80 acres this farmer plants to corn. A part of this corn 
is fenced off and “ hogged down ” in the fall. As fast as the hogs 
need it the fence is moved over, and fresh corn is taken in. This 
pasturing is begun at the same time that corn is usually cut up green 
and fed to hogs, 1. e., when it is in the roasting-ear stage. Spring 
pigs are turned on this. This plan of feeding is kept up until the 
remainder of the corn is all husked from the field. Then the hogs 
are turned in to clean up the waste corn in the field. Last summer 
cowpeas were drilled in the corn when plowing the last time. These 
furnished much valuable feed in addition to the corn. 
In April this man had 20 head of fall pigs averaging about 125 
pounds. These shoats had had no feed except wheat and alfalfa 
pasture and the waste grain they gathered from the field except a 
little corn that was thrown to them each day in the late winter and 
early spring. In April they were put on ground corn for thirty days. 
During this time each ate an average of one-fourth bushel daily. At 
the end of thirty days they averaged 225 pounds. This makes an 
average gain of 34 pounds per day, or a little more than 13 pounds 
of gain for each bushel of corn fed. The market price of corn was 
50 cents a bushel. The hogs sold at $5.50 per hundred, thus bringing 
734 cents a bushel for the corn fed. 
This farmer raises two litters of pigs a year, farrowed in March 
and September, turning off fall pigs in the spring and spring pigs in 
the fall, selling at 6 to 8 months old. From March 15 to November 
1, 1906, he turned off $720.50 worth of hogs and had 22 head in the 
fattening pens, all of his own raising and all grown and fattened 
on the products of his own farm. 
21521—Bul. 111—07—-4 
