Читать книгу One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money - Harold Morse Dunphy - Страница 183

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“Even $50 to $90 seems a rather big price to pay for a single brood sow,” said an old farmer who had made a success of hog raising, “but let me tell you a little story:

“One spring two of my sows farrowed twelve pigs each, and we raised twenty-three of the twenty-four. When they were eight months old, those shoats brought $494.71, but at war-time prices they would have brought a very large sum.

“Suppose a young sow produces seventy-five pigs during her life-time, and she may do even better than that. If this sow were owned by a small farmer, he could raise the pigs for almost nothing, and after he has saved out twelve of the best ones as the foundation of a superior herd, he can sell the remaining sixty-three, when they are eight or ten months old, for enough to make a good-sized payment on his farm, and to pay the cost of raising 500 more pigs, besides.

“The good breeder must be a good feeder, and he will find that, with ordinary intelligence in the selection and care of his pure-bred stock, he can make more money, and have better meat products, many times over, then he can ever hope for from the ordinary scrub stock.

“If farmers will pay more attention to the raising of pure-bred hogs, they will be better off, and be at much less labor and expense, than from any other branch of farming. Let every farmer encourage his boy to have a few blooded pigs of his own, so that he may have the benefit of all the profit they will bring, and boys will not be so anxious to leave the farm as they are now.

“I’ve tried it, and I know.”