—1865—Fatten Hogs Early

#82

From a correspondent of the Ohio Farmer. He first “hogged down” (in western parlance,) forty acres of corn, between the 10th of September and the 23rd of October. By hogs being weighed when they were turned in and when they were taken out, it was found that they paid forty cents per bushel for the corn, estimating the pork at four cents a pound and corn at forty bushels to the acre.

His next course was to take one hundred hogs, averaging two hundred pounds each, which were placed in nine covered pens, and fed all they could eat of corn and cob ground together, steamed, and given in allowances five times a day. In a week they were again weighed, when reckoning 70 pounds of corn and cob as equal to a bushel of corn, and the pork as before, the hogs paid 80 cents a bushel for the corn. the weather was warm for the season.

The experiment was tried again the first week in November, when the corn brought 62 cents, the weather being colder. the third week in November the corn brought only 40 cents, and the 4th week only 26 cents, the weather continuing to grow colder. Another lot of hogs were fed through December, which only gave 26 cents a bushel for the corn. A part of the time the thermometer was at zero, and then the hogs only gained enough to pay five cents a bushel for the corn, and afterwards, when the mercury went down to ten degrees below zero, the hogs only held their own. 

The inference from these trials is, that in general it is not profitable to feed corn to hogs, after the middle of November. The difference gained is certainly surprising, and whether caused altogether by the difference in temperature or not, no person of observation can doubt that hogs gain much more in proportion to the feed consumed in mild than cold weather. 

It seems that the hogs gained much less by helping themselves to corn in the field, than when the corn was ground and cooked, and fed to the animals in pens under equal advantages of weather.
[Leavitt’s Framer's Almanac]