2 BULLETIN 752, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
To establish the swine industry in a community requires time and 
continued effort. Swine growers, to be successful, must acquire skill 
and have some special equipment ; they must develop well-bred herds 
of suitable breeds, and they must build up and maintain a reputation 
for producing a continuing supply of pork. In other words, success- 
ful swine production requires that the producer adjust his operations 
so as to be able to remain in the business continuously. 
In the past, swine production on irrigated lands has involved too 
many speculative features. Farmers commonly have gone into the 
business extensively when prices were high, only to go out of it later 
when prices were low. Thus, they have incurred losses in both trans- 
actions. Besides, they have expended large sums for equipment, 
which deteriorated rapidly when not in use. 
One of the many causes of this uneconomic practice has been a lack 
of information as to the possibility of utilizing certain field crops 
produced under irrigation and the values of these crops when meas- 
ured in terms of pork production. In some instances these values 
have been overestimated and overstocking has resulted; in others, 
farmers have underestimated feed values, and have either under- 
stocked with hogs or have sold both their hogs and their feed in the 
mistaken belief that " the market would pay more for the feed than 
the hogs would." Irrigation farmers have been strongly inclined to 
rely exclusively on old-established methods of swine production, so 
that at times of advancing grain prices, swine holdings have been 
inordinately reduced. Too little attention has been paid to the possi- 
bilities of utilizing fully certain field crops which are peculiarly 
adapted to irrigation farming. Many irrigation farmers have failed 
to appreciate the range of field crops available to them as feed for 
hogs, and to understand the swine-producing possibilities of irriga- 
tion agriculture through a better use of these crops. 
Most of the published data regarding the feeding values of various 
crops used in swine production have been secured in nonirrigated 
sections. These data can not always be applied safely in irrigated 
districts, particularly in reference to crops which are pastured by 
hogs or " hogged off." One of the most important points in connec- 
tion with the hog-pasturing method of utilizing these crops is the 
labor-saving feature — a feature of great importance in the sparsely 
settled irrigated districts, where labor commonly is expensive and 
difficult to secure. 
Since 1912 the Department of Agriculture has been conducting 
experiments at its Western Irrigation Agriculture field stations 1 in 
1 These field stations are operated by the Office of Western Irrigation Agriculture of 
the Bureau of Plant Industry. Since 1914 the Animal Husbandry Division of the Bureau 
of Animal Industry and the Office of Demonstrations on Reclamation Projects in the 
Bureau of Plant Industry have cooperated in this work. The State experiment stations 
of Montana, Nebraska, and Oregon also cooperate in the investigations in those States. 
