Iowa voter. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1867-1874, 1872-01-11

half of all the hogs fed in Iowa do not
| produce over five pounds gross weight for
each bushel of corn fed, which, counting
hogs at $500 per hundred pounds, gives
fifteen cents per bushel for corn.
1t would be very difficult, we think, to
get twenty pounds of pork from bushel
| OF corn, even under the most favorable
| circumstances. But we are well assured
that two pounds per bushel, and even less,
is sometimes realized, where hogs are fed
on the ground. and left to shift for them
selves for shelter as best Trey may. From
our own experiments, in former years,
we have never realized more than sixteen
pounds for each bushel of corn fed, and
this with warm, clean pens, the corn
coarsely ground and cooked Fed on the
| ear, dry, II realized nine pounds cooked,
In four-barrel cauldron, on the ear, until
the grains burst, fourteen pounds were
realized per bushel. These are the results
in even pounds. From these experiments,
as carefully conducted as appliances would
admit, made upon the pure-bred Suffolk
swine of fifteen to twenty years ago, we
found that for corn fed whole AT fifty cents
per bushel the pork must net five and
one-half cents per pound gross, TO pay for
the food consumed.
The grinding we estimated at twelve
and a half cents per bushel, and the cook
ing at the same figure. This would bring
the bushel of ground and cooked corn to
seventy-tive cents per bushel, equal 10
sixteen pounds OF pork, or four and seven
tenth cents, nearly, per pound; or cooked
on the ear at twelve and a half cents, equal
10 siXty-two and n half cents per bushel
producing fourteen pounds pork, at -four
and half cents per pound, nearly.
Therefore with pork at the average price
of three cents per pound, gross in the
country markets, the corn is worth to the
feeder, twenty-Seven cents and two mills
per bushel; estimating the cost Of feeding
and the cost of hauling to market, as be.
ing equal
The result of these experiments were,
| that at less than forty cents per pushed, il
would not pay to either cook, or grind
! corn; and, that the ratio Of profits is in
| creased with the advance in price, from
| the minimum of forty cents as the initial
! point, and, progressively; since it costs
no more to cook and grind corn worth
81. 90 per bushel, than il does when it is
! worth only twenty-five cents. Hence the
! great difference between agricultural econ
omy in the Eastern States and at the
West. There the feeder would impover-
ish himself, in feeding unground or I'M
cooked corn; here the same result would
follow from grinding and cooking corn at
twenty-five cents per bushel.
There is no doubt but that swine. where
they have the run Of good summer pas
ture, with dry shelter for lodging and
feeding, will realize from fifteen to
eighteen pounds for each bushel of corn
fed whole, if the pasturage is not esti-
mated. The manurial value TO the field
from the hogs fed thereon will fully com.
pensate for the use of the pasture.
With corn at twenty to twenty-five
cents per bushel, and hogs az three cents
per pound on foot, there is still money in
pork if it is economically handed AT
least more money than in the same corn
at twenty five to thirty cents per bushcL
- Western RUynI