The task of the stock feeder must be to utilize through his skill and knowledge the inedible products of the farm and factory, such as hay, corn stalks, straw, bran, brewers' and distillers' grains, gluten feed, and the like, and to make at least a fraction of them available for man's use. In so doing he will be really adding to the food supply and will be rendering a great public service. Rather than seek to stimulate live stock husbandry the ideal should be to adjust it to the limits set by the available supply of forage crops and by-product feeding stuffs while, on the other hand, utilizing these to the greatest practicable extent, because in this way we save some of what would otherwise be a total loss....
The hog is the great competitor of man for the higher grades of food, and in swine husbandry as ordinarily conducted we are in danger of paying too much for our roast pig. Cattle and sheep, on the other hand, although less efficient as converters, can utilize products which man can not use and save some of their potential value as human food. From this point of view, as well as on account of the importance of milk to infants and invalids, the high economy of food production by the dairy cow deserves careful consideration, although of course the large labor requirement is a counterbalancing factor.
At any rate, it is clear that at the present time enthusiastic but ill-considered "booming" of live stock production may do more harm than good. If it is desirable to restrict or prohibit the production of alcohol from grain or potatoes on the ground that it involves a waste of food value, the same reason calls for restriction of the burning-up of these materials to produce roast pig. This means, of course, a limited meat supply. To some of us this may seem a hardship. Meat, however, is by no means the essential that we have been wont to suppose and partial deprivation of it is not inconsistent with high bodily efficiency. Certainly no patriotic citizen would wish to insist on his customary allowance of roast pig at the cost of the food supply of his brothers in the trenches.
[2] "Roast Pig," _Science_, 1917, xlvi, 160.
The United States Department of Agriculture has estimated that a pig that has reached the weight of 150 pounds should be slaughtered, because beyond that weight the cost of the quantity of feed required to maintain the animal is out of proportion to the gain in food value of the pig. One might, therefore, call a pig weighing 150 pounds a _maximal economic hog_.