VoL. LX. 
No. 2661 
NEW YORK, JANUARY 26, 1901. 
81 PER YEAR. 
A WESTERN HOG RAISER'S METHODS. 
CORN, WATER, AIR AND PASTURE. 
The Fine Art of Pork Making. 
CORN AND WATER.—The average western hog- 
raiser is dreadfully “unscientific” in his methods, but 
he i-aises hogs, and lots of them, and usually makes 
plenty of money by the operation. The writer was 
reared on a farm, in a “hog district,” in the great 
Middle West, where hogs are raised on corn, just plain 
corn and water (and, as the Editor suggests, plenty of 
fresh air), and nothing more, and never dreamed that 
they were ever raised in any other way, nor that 
there was other normal food for swine than corn. 
Once upon a time when visiting a farmer in south¬ 
eastern New York, I was requested, in the absence 
of the farmer, to feed the “pig”—a 400-pound swill 
barrel, in a hog skin, on a board fioor, in a little 4x8 
sty. After searching long for the corn crib, I found a 
few well-preserved ears, which were fed to piggy, but 
this bloated eastern aristocrat positively refused to 
eat them! On tne return of the farmer, great light 
was shed on the subject of pork-raising as practiced 
in the East and the West, and on the preservation of 
■seed com .' That was 15 years ago, but the 
wonder expressed by those people is not 
yet dim in my recollection, and thinking 
that others might wish to know of the 
western method, it is here outlined. 
A HOG FORCER.—Sidney Terwilliger, 
whose farm is within five miles of Madi¬ 
son, and within iy 2 mile of a railroad 
station, is a fair example of the Wiscon¬ 
sin hog-raiser. Mr. Terwilliger tried 
“cow-punching” on the plains in the ear¬ 
ly days of the ranching industry, when 
the men who pursued this calling were 
liable at any moment to be themselves 
pursued by hostile Indians, intent on 
scalp-lifting. He now occupies a hand¬ 
some modern residence in one of the pret¬ 
tiest suburbs of Madison, within easy 
reach of his 300-acre farm. I called on 
him recently for the purpose of getting 
facts in regard to present-day methods. 
He had but just returned from Chicago, 
where he had gone with a carload of hogs, 
and as the markets had been favorable 
for some time, the answers to my ques¬ 
tions were naturally somewhat optimistic. 
“How many hogs do you sell in a year?” 
“Prom 175 to 225. I shall have about 
220 this year.” 
“At what age do you aim to have the pigs ready for 
market?” 
“Prom nine to 10 months. If properly handled, 
there is more money in a pig at nine months than at 
any later time. Mine will average 250 pounds at this 
age. I aim to have them ready in December or Janu¬ 
ary. I am breeding later and later every year, and 
next year will have no pigs before May 1, as they start 
off better at this season, and with less trouble than 
earlier.” 
“What breed do you consider best for this ‘forcing 
method’?” 
“The Poland China; I have tried Chester White and 
Jersey Red, and crosses of each on Poland China, but 
I am breeding back to pure Poland China now. The 
Chesters are not prolific enough to be profitable, and 
the Jerseys are too heavy-framed, and require too 
long a time to mature; they are too slow in laying 
on fat.” 
“How many brood sows do you keep, and how are 
they fed?” 
“I have selected 40 sows this year from the drove. 
These are fed but little corn now, but have the run of 
the steer-feeding yards instead. 1 figure on five pigs 
apiece. Sometimes as many as 16 are born, but five 
or six is the average raised. The sows, of course, 
have separate pens with board floors. Ground feed 
(corn and oats) and whole corn is the diet. The milk 
from 20 cows is fed, but this amounts to little. When 
the pigs are eight or nine weeks old, runways are 
opened, and the pigs are given all of the milk, but 
this amount, as you can imagine, furnishes little more 
than a good-sized smell for each one; but this, with 
good pasture, is all they get until new corn comes in.” 
“Don’t you feed shorts?” 
“None at all. 1 have not fed five tons of shorts in 
all the time I have raised hogs, 25 years. Corn and 
water is the diet, with plenty of grass.” 
NOTHING LIKE CORN.—This is the secret of it. 
Western farmers are accustomed to say that their 
pork is produced on corn and water alone, but forget 
the grass. Good pasturage all the Summer is the rule, 
with a liberal allowance of old corn. Late in Au¬ 
gust, or as soon as the growing corn has fairly well 
formed ears, “snapping” is begun. The ears are 
grasped near the end, and by a sharp, downward mo¬ 
tion are easily broken from the stalk. The hogs do 
the husking, and do it well; if not overfed the softer 
husks and the cobs will often be eaten also. Acres of 
corn are fed by this method, and the stalks left stand¬ 
ing, to be picked over later by cattle. Mr. Terwilliger, 
however, no longer “snaps” corn, but fences off a por¬ 
tion of the cornfield and turns in the drove. By this 
plan the labor of gathering the ears is saved. Later, 
as the stalks ripen and the husks open, corn is husked 
and fed direct from the field. 
One of the typical and intei-esting sights of a west¬ 
ern hog farm is the feeding. A two-horse load of corn, 
which means from 30 to 40 bushels of ears, is hauled 
direct from the field to the pasture or yards, into the 
midst of 200 or 300 squealing porkers. Until the 
teamster can secure his team and start shoveling, the 
din is something terrific. The scoop-shovel is soon 
set in motion and the great yellow ears are scattered 
over the field, and all is quiet except for the crunching 
and grinding of the Kernels in 200 hungry mouths. 
Where the drove is as large as Mr. Terwilliger’s, one 
man is kept fairly busy husking and feeding. No 
stated hours nor any given amount of corn is pro¬ 
scribed. As much is fed as will be eaten, and it is 
astonishing to see the quantity that will be consumed. 
There is no variety. Corn for breakfast; corn for 
dinner, corn for supper and corn at the numerous 
lunch hours. Only corn and nothing moi’e—except 
grass and water, and as the season advances, grass is 
no longer available. At the close of the fattening 
period the porkers, when not eating, lie sleeping in 
the Autumn sunshine, turning corn fat into hog fat. 
Mr. Terwilliger, in common with other large pi’odu- 
cers, prefers to hire a car or cars, and ship his hogs, 
rather than sell to traveling buyers. From 60 to 70 
250-pound hogs is the capacity of an ordinary stock 
car. Freight and stockyard charges are thus paid by 
the owner, but the gain in price over that offered by 
the buyer, is usually sufficient to insure a handsome 
profit when this system is followed. 
THE DARK SIDE.—This is the bright side of the 
hog-feeder’s picture, and it might be inferred from 
this that a fortune may be easily and quickly 
made producing pork for the Chicago market. It 
sounded easy as Mr. Terwilliger told it, and had I 
not known him for a lifetime I might have been in¬ 
duced to buy a farm and attempt to do likewise. 
Fifty-five thousand pounds of pork! Also 12,000 
pounds of beef, besides several hundred pounds of 
butter and a few young horses to sell every year! 
Thousands of western farmers do as well, 
while thousands of others fail. It is the 
man and not the crops after all. I have 
not mentioned the hog cholera, the dread¬ 
ed scourge of every farmer in the North¬ 
west. Anxiously the drove is watched, 
and if a wheezy cough is heard or a pork¬ 
er refuses his feed, cold chills run down 
the owner’s back, for he well knows what 
to expect, viz., instead of several thou¬ 
sand pounds of pork at $5 per 100, he will 
have in a few weeks a fine lot of fertilizer 
worth $5 per ton. In three townships of 
Dane Co., Wis., the loss has been esti¬ 
mated at $50,000 last Fall. When wheat 
raising failed in Wisconsin Mr. Terwilli¬ 
ger, in common with many others, pos¬ 
sessed the foresight to go into this line 
of farming, and 25 years of careful study 
of breeds and methods have brought suc¬ 
cess. As the present generation of western 
farmers have shifted from wheat to corn 
and pork, so the next generation will 
without doubt shift largely to butter and 
cheese. The dairy cow is bound to divide 
honors in the future with the hog, but 
they will work well togetner. 
FREDERIC CKANEFIELU. 
Wisconsin Exp. Station. 
R. N.-x'.—There is one very sure thing about the 
hog business. If Mr. Terwilliger undertook to feed 
and breed such objects as the one pictured on this 
page. Fig. 19, he would have a different story to tell. 
His corn would simply vanish into thin air, blown 
through the hog’s throat in the form of squeals. The 
animal is a true “razorback” from the South. She 
can outrun a deer anu eat more than an elephant. 
She was carried about from one fair to another to ad¬ 
vertise a wire fence, and taught facts regarding live¬ 
stock keeping. Here is one result of “natural selec¬ 
tion.” Inbreeding has reduced her vitality and given 
prominence to the parts of her carcass—such as nose 
and legs—which are of least service to man. She has 
also been left to select her food “naturally,” and that 
means little of it when most needed. Yes, indeed, it 
is a long step from the stringy “razorback” to the 
meat-making Poland China, but there is hope for 
the grandchildren of this old sow! Could not she and 
her descendants be improved by feeding alone? Yes, 
to a great extent, but it would require long years to 
accomplish the desired results. The introduction of 
improved blood would be a surer and quicker method 
because this improved blood would bring with it in 
herited tendencies to produce better shape, larger size 
and ability to turn food into meat instead of motion. 
