Modern Pig-Keeping

Northern Advocate, 15 January 1938, Page 10

Modern Pig-Keeping

By C. E. Cuming

Quality Means Cost Unfortunately there are still many farmers who think that every penny ihey get from the pigs they sell should be absolute profit and that it will not pay to spend any money on meals with which to balance the ration. There are others who do buy seme necessary rut even these tlJnk they r.re losing some of their legitimate profit. The truth is that if the farmer is showing a fifty per cent profit, that is over actual cost of purchased food, he is doing particularly well, and very much better than the farmer of any other country. The world markets also are getting more and more critical and the necessity is becoming daily greater of exporting only quality goods, and to produce quality bacon some grain meal must be fed, especially in the finishing stages.

Separated Milk and Whey.

A reader has written in regard to the relative value of skim milk and whey. Readers should remember in

comparing the chemical analysis of separated milk and whey with other foods that chemical analysis does not count for everything. Research workers are finding out that there is something in both separated milk and whey that makes them much more valuable foods than they are generally supposed to be. Probably it is in the nature of the chemicals, the amino acis, or the vitamins, but it is undoubtedly something that makes these

residual foods of special value, especially in the making of pig flesh. And if these foods were handled mere carefully, especially by the use of cleaner vessels, and nothing allowed to reduce their palatability, they would give even better results than they now do. It is a complaint against whey that the feeding of it makes for thin bellies, but this danger is greatly reduced where the whey is fed frequently, at least four or five times a

day. An English authority slated recently that whey has a tendency to produce soft fat, but this has yet to be proved. Pigs fed in this country on whey (together with meat and grain meal) have given carcases which have been praised for the quality of flesh and fat.