612 



Pigs for Pork. 



[Oct., 



important utility properties such as constitution, lean flesh 

 and milk. Of late years a change has come in the practice and 

 consequently in the belief, so that the keeping of pure-bred 

 Middle White pigs for the production of small pork is becom- 

 ing far more general, whilst for this branch of the pork trade 

 there are also being bred large numbers of pigs which are the 

 produce of ordinary country sows of the small type mated with 

 Middle White or Berkshire boars. 



It is claimed that the production of small pork is by far the 

 most profitable branch of the pig industry because the sows 

 cost less to keep, the pork costs less per lb. to produce, and 

 the market value of the pork is higher than that from old and 

 heavy pigs. The alleged decreased cost in the production of 

 pork may be due to a very considerable extent, if not wholly, 

 to the. fact that young pigs need a smaller weight of food than 

 older pigs to make a given increase in their live weight. Ex- 

 periments have show^n that a gradual but sure increase in 

 weight of food is required for each pound of addition to the 

 weight of the live pig. Against this advantage in the produc- 

 tion of light weight fat pigs must be set the increased number 

 of lives which have to be sacrificed to produce a certain weight. 

 This is not at the present time so serious a matter, now^ that 

 the price of weanling pigs is approaching the normal as it was 

 a year or two since when pigs newly weaned were selling at 

 prices up to d94 each. Under the latter condition the raw 

 material in the form of live pig would have cost at least four 

 times as much as it w^ould now. This variation would not 

 perhaps appear to be so large if the producer of porkers 

 adopted the more profitable system of breeding the pigs which 

 he converted into small pork. 



With regard to the increased cost of the production of pork 

 from older than from young pigs. Professor Henry gave the 

 ■combined results of numbers of experiments carried out at 

 various agricultural stations in the United States, and from 

 them estimated that pigs weighing alive from 15 to 50 lb. 

 required 293 lb. of food to make an increase of 100 lb. in their 

 live weight, pigs from 50 lb. to 100 lb. required 400 lb., pigs 

 from 100 to 150 lb. required 437 lb., pigs from 150 to 200 lb. 

 required 482 lb., pigs from 200 to 250 lb. required 498 lb. and 

 pigs from 250 to 300 lb. needed 511 lb. These figures show a 

 difference of more than two-fifths between pigs weighing 15 

 to 50 lb. and those w^eighing 250 to 300 lb., the latter being 

 about the heaviest weight of fat pigs marketed at the present 

 time for pork purposes. 



