“I also raised 100 chickens this year. I joined the Soldiers of the Soil, and with $15 I borrowed in June I bought 105 baby chickens and raised 100 of them. In June, 1919, I will pay off my note. I am going to market all my roosters and keep the pullets. I could pay the note now, but I am going to lend it to Uncle Sam on the Fourth Liberty Bond for our boys over there. I have found time to knit socks for some of my cousins over on the firing line.”
PLAN No. 728. 33 ACRES, 23 PIGS, GIVE BOYS $2,255.64
Twenty-three boys under 16 years of age, in a Haywood County, Tennessee, pig club, each bought a pig. The average weight of the pigs was 78 pounds. Most of them were registered. In 180 days they attained a weight of 266 pounds each, at a cost for feed of 101⁄2 cents a pound. These pigs at the time of the local pig club show were worth 15 cents a pound, at market prices, making a profit of 41⁄2 cents a pound, averaging a net return to each boy of $11.97 over cost of all feed—a total gain for the club of $275.31.
Now see what the corn club in the same community has done: Thirty-three boys, 16 and under, each cultivated one acre in corn, according to instructions furnished by the county agent, produced an average of 53.1 bushels to the acre at $1.40 a bushel selling price—$74.48—making a total production for all of $2,457. Cost of raising the corn was 271⁄2 cents a bushel, or a total cost of $477.51, leaving a clear profit of $1,980.33
Now add to this the pig club profits of $275.31 and you have a grand profit for the boys of $2,255.64 from thirty-three acres of land and twenty-three small pigs.
If boys can do this well what can a man thoroughly trained in farming do? The government will supply you with unlimited literature on farming if you write to them, and will give you much other assistance if you call on them.
PLAN No. 729. TEXAS BOYS MAKE MONEY FROM CALVES
“I have bought a $50 Liberty Bond and intend to use the balance to help in paying my expenses at the A. and M. College the coming term,” was the answer of a boy in Nolan County, Texas, when asked what he would do with the profit from the sale of his two prize-winning calves.
This boy, a member of an agriculture club conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture and the Texas A. and M. College, exhibited two calves at the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show. His steer calf, a little over a year old, and weighing 950 pounds, brought $149.62, besides winning $25 in prizes. The cost of feed and other expenses was $85 for each calf, leaving a profit of $103.14 on the two, besides the $50 in prize money.
Another entry at the Fort Worth show was that of a 15-year-old club member from Sweetwater, whose calf, fourteen months old and weighing, after shrinkage, 1,060 pounds, sold for $169, after winning $20 in prizes. This young exhibitor believes in good stock, and has bought a registered Hereford calf with the proceeds.