EXPERIENCE TEACHES.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 136, 10 June 1926, Page 6

EXPERIENCE TEACHES.

A FARMER’S STORY. (By a Farmer.) It may possibly interest some of the readers of “/Pigs ’ to hear how I came to try scientific feeding methods on my pigs. I have been farming for many years, and used to like to feed my pigs as m,y father cud before me. I had found out by experience which meals the pigs d.id well on and liked, and I used to mix these together into a “ slop.” I am conservative, and I do not like changing my ways, and when I read in the papers and 1 elsewhere that my methods of feeding were all whong, I did not Lelieve it, and I was very suspicious of people who said so; and when I first read about balanced rations, I wou.d have tacked my “ slop ” against any of them. But what did arouse my interest in the subject was that these balanced rations were mostly made up of the meals I always had used in my “slop.” That made me th’nlc there must be something in the idea after all. At the same time I did nad it very difficult to believe that it was possible to fatten a pig quicker cnan I ever had, and on less food, and cheaper. The papers and pamphlets from which I first got an idea of the possibilities of better feeding were issued by the Agricultural College in the district and invited anyone interested to visit the college farm. What struck me most wag a pen of good fat pigs which were just going off the next day to the bacon factory. They had just been weighed that morning and went out 2401 b. on the average, which is the weight the bacon factories

like best down in this part o-f the country. I thought they looked about nine or ten months old, as mine used to be by the -time they were fit fc'r bacon. But these pigs were only seven months. At first I did not believe it and said, so. I had bred and fed pigs since I was a boy., and I had never heard of pigs growing as fast as that. The next thing I had to do was to find out how to produce bacon pigs I at seven months old on my own farm; I and before long I found myself asking question after question about things which, until that after-noon, I thought I knew all abou:. I still found it ve'ry difficult to believe that what we a'.ways used to do in the old. days was so hopelessly wrong—but there seemed to be no getting away from it. So I asked them if they had any weaners to sell off the college farm, and as they had I bought ten of them. My old pigman thought the devil was in those pigs; he had never seen pigs grow like that before, neither had I for that matter. By the time they were seven months old they were fit for bacon and went off to the factory and made top price. I Since then there have been no more mongrel pigs on my farm, nor have I fed any more of the old “ slops.” I scrapped all my sows and the old boar ‘ —they did not fetch much, but I saw I they would only lose money if I kept them. All the pigs I feed now aVe a first cross from pedigree parents. As to the rations, I am not scholar enough to be able to make them up. but the Agricultural College will always give 1 me advice on the matter, and all I have to do is to buy the meals and mix them as they specify. I cannot understand why more fa'rmers don't do the I same as I do. I often try to persuade them, hut they won’t believe me.— "Pigs.”