Proper housing is essential in profitable swine production. The largest financial returns are obtained only when dry, sanitary, comfortable and convenient housing conditions are provided. It is a mistake to think the hog does not need to be protected from the weather. Having been originally a native of comparatively warm climates, nature has not provided the hog with much in the way of protective covering. It is true it has layers of fat, when it is fat, which offer protection but there is not the thick coat of hair or wool with which other farm animals are provided. Again, it is recognized that the best way to guard against the ravages of disease is to provide sanitary conditions. These considerations, together with the possibility of saving much labor in a well planned house over a poorly planned one, is the occasion for giving much thought and study to the problem of housing swine.

For several years, the Agricultural Engineering and Animal Husbandry sections of the Iowa Agricultural Experiment station have been making a careful investigation of the design and construction of hog houses. Bulletin 152, published in October, 1914, in addition to setting forth the essentials of an ideal hog house and discussing quite fully the relative. merits of the movable and consolidated or community types, described in detail the construction of several types of movable hog houses which had been thoroly tried out at the station. In Bulletin 152 an announcement was made of the work being carried on in connection with community or centralized hog houses. This work has been continued until the present; this bulletin reports the results obtained.