PLAN No. 757. BOYS’ YOUNG SOW MAKES NET PROFIT OF $385 IN LESS THAN 12 MONTHS
Three hundred and eighty-five dollars in less than a year—that’s the clear profit a young sow gave two boys who live in Harris County, Texas. Theorists in farm management and the like might figure up a pretty big bill of costs against the sow, to be deducted from the profit she has made, but the boys know that such figures would not tell the truth, because they’ve got the money in their pockets—or they did have it.
The sow and her progeny did eat sixteen bushels of corn, worth $24, and they did range over five acres of pasture, considered worth $25. These two items—a total of $49—have already been charged to the sow, and deducted from her gross revenue of $434. The remaining $385 is clear profit, because the rest of the feed consisted of slop and surplus milk that would have been thrown away had there been no pigs, and peanuts and sweet potatoes gleaned by rooting the patches after the crops had been harvested as carefully as possible. She farrowed her first litter of pigs April 4, 1918. One died and two were given in payment for the sow. The other four were grown, fattened, and killed to furnish the family supply of lard and pork. Another litter of six pigs came later in the year and are now on the farm—good-sized shotes in first-class condition. The sow will farrow a third litter of pigs before long. The account now stands this way:
The original sow, $60; six shotes, $60; 800 pounds of pork, $224; twenty five gallons of lard, $90. These four items make a total of $434 from which a deduction of $49 is to be made for corn and pasture. Those figures prove that hog raising on the farms of Harris County, Texas, is profitable. But the caution to be written at the bottom of this story is: do not carry figures too far. Making figures in arithmetic fashion, you would have this: If one sow makes a profit of $385, 100 sows would make a profit of $38,500. That is perfectly good arithmetic but it is not good farming.
The big profit in hog raising on southern farms, the specialists of the United States Department of Agriculture point out, is made where the farm family keeps enough hogs to consume all the waste products, to convert into money the things that would otherwise be lost, and that can be kept on a minimum of bought or stored feed. Every dollar got out of that number of hogs is practically clear profit. Beyond that point the profit dwindles.
The number of hogs that can be profitably kept is, of course, a matter that each farm family must determine for itself. In some cases it may be one sow. In others it may be six or a dozen or any number of sows. On every farm there is some waste that pigs could convert into money. On most farms it probably amounts to at least as much as on one farm, where, in one year, a boy made one sow produce enough revenue to buy a whole set of new furniture for mother or to keep sister in college for a year.