PIG PRODUCTION.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 229, 22 March 1928, Page 6

PIG PRODUCTION.

RESULTS OF FEEDING TRIALS. “The pig industry at present has every appearance of going ahead, and the surest way to help it is to start in a small way on sound lines. Build up a thrifty herd by means of the scales; study the possibilities of self-feeders, pastures, milk, and meat-meal; keep away from the saleyards; feed better in winter; make pigs a sideline; and when you have enough information to feed them profitably the trade will be in a position to market them as profitably as fat lambs are marketed.”

This is the advice offered those interested in pig production by Mr M. J. Scott, 8.A., B.Sc., A.1.C., chemist to the Canterbury Agricultural College, in the course of his report to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research on the results of feeding trials in relation to pig production. The complete report, with graphs and tables setting out the details of the trials, is issued in bulletin form. “ It is evident, from the numerous trials made on different strains of the same breed of pigs in the same way under the same conditions, that, as in the dairy world, there are good cows and bad cows, so with pigs there are good thrivers and bad thrivers,” says the report. “Some pigs in a feed lot fatten in nine weeks; others the same size when the trial beginfe take as long as fourteen weeks to reach pork weights. The first are always "profitably fed, the slower ones rarely so. | Further, pigs of the same breed and [ similarly fed turn out on killing to be | entirely different carcasses. The one , produces a high-class carcass, the I other an inferior carcass, because of, 1 either insufficiency of lean meat in it, I or because of the coarseness of the meat. It is rather a serious charge to lay at the feet of breeds, that, while they have selected and bred pigs—and it is the same with other animals—to the requirements of judges who make 1 their awards on external characters, such as size and shape of ears and colour of hair, which have proved to be no indication of the eating qualities of the carcass, they have failed to select within a breed (a) pigs that thrive economically, (b) pigs that possess uniformly good carcasses. Judges are even to-day giving awards to \ fat stock that are too fat for human consumption, and the folly of their judging is to be seen in any city butcher's shop, where sometimes half the carcass of fat sheep is thrown into the scrap-heap. If they would admit that they can only guess at carcass qualities, and if breeders would begin to breed from good thrivers and high-

quality carcasses, irrespective of colour of hair and shape of ears, we would soon have a pig that would put New Zealand trade in the very forefront of the world. Breeding must come in side by aide with feeding if the best is going to be achieved by either.”

In one trial, 1001 b. live weight was produced for 45s 9d, against 52s 9d for similar feed, and pigs on a different trial—a difference of 14 per cent, to 15 per cent. Pig producers were recommended to weigh their weaners at the ages of four and eight weeks, and not breed or select from sows that failed to produce from 3001 b. to 4001 b. of live weight, weaners in eight weeks (ten pigs of 401 b each or six pigs of 501 b each). Mr Scott states that pigs will show a profit:—“(l) When we know the right kind of pig to produce (2) when all interests combine to market them economically; (3) when the feeder breeds his own weaners; (4) when porkers are produced; (5) when the present winter starvation is replaced by sound productive feeding; (6) whether fed on skim milk, or grain, or grain and potatoes, or any other feed, only when they eat as much as they can; (7) they do this when their feed

is ‘completed’ by the use of milk* wheat-meal, or other food rich in flesh formers, requiring not more than 11 gallon of milk or ilb. of meat-mea] per pig per day; (8) when labour costal are reduced to a minimum by the of self-feeders and outside runs ar« shelters.”