COST OF PRODUCING HOGS IN IOWA AND ILLINOIS 25 
Farm improvements should be made to produce more efficiently, to 
perform the work with more convenience, and to better the general 
appearance of the farm layout. This study of costs and methods of 
pork production seems to indicate that many farmers do not get 
more economical production of pork through the use of more expen- 
sive equipment. 
None of these hog farms are extravagantly equipped for hog pro- 
duction. Only a few of them have hog houses costing over $1,000. 
The average investment in equipment per sow was approximately 
$34 on farms studied in 1921 and $26.50 on the farms in the 1922 
study. When breeding operations are being reduced, and fewer 
sows are bred, the burden of equipment costs per sow will be even 
eater. 
othe farms that had the larger equipment charge per sow produced 
somewhat larger litters. Among the spring litters the number of 
pigs weaned per sow increased along with the better equipment; but 
the amount and the cost of equipment did not appear to have so 
Fic. 11.—Hog equipment does not have to be elaborate. Light houses that can be moved from 
one pasture to another after they have served as farrowing pens make very serviceable equipment 
close relationship to the size of the fall litters. The number of spring 
pigs and fall pigs per litter are given in Table 18 by farms that had 
different equipment expense. There did not seem to be much 
regularity in the percentage of total annual pork that was produced 
by the two-litter system between the groups having different equip- 
ment charges per sow in the two years. In 1921 the farms that had 
the lowest equipment charge per sow produced no fall litters, in 1922 
those farms having the least equipment per sow produced as large 
a share of their pork from fall pigs as Fee having more costly 
equipment. 
Large litters are obtained by using good breeding animals, by 
feeding them properly, and by painstaking attention to the sow and 
her litter. The farms having the higher equipment charges produced 
the larger litters, and the sows on these farms had more labor put on 
them. This table is presented to show that there is no object in 
having unnecessarily elaborate equipment, but that in the last 
analysis there are other things that affaot success In hog production 
far more than the cost of equipment, (Fig. 11.) 
