THE RAZORBACK
We have now launched three of the four principal industries of our
factory farm. The fourth is perhaps the most important of all, if a
single member of a group of mutually dependent industries can have this
distinction. There is no question that the farmer's best friend is the
hog. He will do more for him and ask less of him than any other animal.
All he asks is to be born. That is enough for this non-ruminant
quadruped, who can find his living in the earth, the roadside ditch, or
the forest, and who, out of a supply of grass, roots, or mast, can
furnish ham and bacon to the king's taste and the poor man's
maintenance. The half-wild razorback, with never a clutch of corn to his
back, gives abundant food to the mountaineer over whose forest he
ranges. The cropped or slit ear is the only evidence of human care or
human ownership. He lives the life of a wild beast, and in the autumn he
dies the death of a wild beast; while his flesh, made rich with juices
of acorns, beechnuts, and other sweet masts, nourishes a man whose only
exercise of ownership is slaughter. The hog that can make his own
living, run like a deer, and drink out of a jug, has done more for the
pioneer and the backwoodsman than any other animal.
Take this semi-wild beast away from his wild haunts, give him food and
care, and he will double his gifts. Add a hundred generations of careful
selection, until his form is so changed that it is beyond recognition,
and again the product will be doubled. The spirit of swine is not
changed by civilization or good breeding; such as it was on that day
when the herd "ran down a steep place and was drowned in the sea," such
it is to-day. A fixed determination to have its own way dominated the
creature then, and a pig-headed desire to be the greatest food-producing
machine in the world is its ruling passion now. That the hog has
succeeded in this is beyond question; for no other food animal can
increase its own weight one hundred and fifty fold in the first eight
months of its life.
All over the world there is a growing fondness for swine flesh, and the
ever increasing supply doesn't outrun the demand. Since the dispersion
of the tribes of Israel there has been no persistent effort to
depopularize this wonderful food maker. Pig has more often been the food
of the poor than of the rich, but now rich and poor alike do it honor.
Old Ben Jonson said:--
"Now pig is meat, and a meat that is nourishing and may be desired, and
consequently eaten: it may be eaten; yea, very exceedingly well eaten."
Hundreds have praised the rasher of ham, and thousands the flitch of
bacon; it took the stroke of but one pen to make roast pig classical.
The pig of to-day is so unlike his distant progenitor that he would not
be recognized; if by any chance he were recognized, it would be only
with a grunt of scorn for his unwieldy shape and his unenterprising
spirit. Gone are the fleet legs, great head, bulky snout, terrible jaws,
warlike tusks, open nostrils, flapping ears, gaunt flanks, and racing
sides; and with these has gone everything that told of strength,
freedom, and wild life. In their place has come a cuboidal mass, twice
as long as it is broad or high, with a place in front for mouth and
eyes, and a foolish-looking leg under each corner. A mighty fall from
"freedom's lofty heights," but a wonderfully improved machine. The
modern hog is to his progenitor as the man with the steam-hammer to the
man with the stone-hammer,--infinitely more useful, though not so free.
It is not easy to overestimate the value of swine to the general farmer;
but to the factory farmer they are indispensable. They furnish a
profitable market for much that could not be sold, and they turn this
waste material into a surprising lot of money in a marvellously short
time. A pig should reach his market before he is nine months old. From
the time he is new-born until he is 250 days old, he should gain at
least one pound a day, which means five cents, in ordinary times.
During this time he has eaten, of things which might possibly have been
sold, perhaps five dollars' worth. At 250 days, with a gain of one pound
a day, he is worth, one year with another, $12.50. This is putting it
too low for my market, but it gives a profit of not less than $6 a head
after paying freight and commissions. It is, then, only a question of
how many to keep and how to keep them. To answer the first half of this
question I would say, Keep just as many as you can keep well. It never
pays to keep stock on half rations of food or care, and pigs are not
exceptions. In answering the other half of the question, how to keep
them, I shall have to go into details of the first building of a piggery
at Four Oaks.
As in the case of the hens, I determined to start clean. Hogs had been
kept on the farm for years, and, so far as I could learn, there had been
no epizoötic disease. The swine had had free range most of the time, and
the specimens which I bought were healthy and as well grown as could be
expected. They were not what I wanted, either in breed or in
development, so they had been disposed of, all but two. These I now
consigned to the tender care of the butcher, and ordered the sty in
which they had been kept to be burned.
I had planned to devote lot No. 2 to a piggery. There are five acres in
this lot, and I thought it large enough to keep four or five hundred
pigs of all sizes in good health and good condition for forcing. Some of
the swine, not intended for market, would have more liberty; but close
confinement in clean pens and small runs was to be the rule. To crowd
hogs in this way, and at the same time to keep them free from disease,
would require special vigilance. The ordinary diseases that come from
damp and draughts could be fended off by carefully constructed
buildings. Cleanliness and wholesome food ought to do much, and
isolation should accomplish the rest. I have established a perfect
quarantine about my hog lot, and it has never been broken. After the
first invoices of swine in the winter and spring of 1896, no hog, young
or old, has entered my piggery, save by the way of a sixty-day
quarantine in the wood lot, and very few by that way.
My pigs are several hundred yards from the public roads, and my
neighbor, Jackson, has planted a young orchard on his land to the north
of my hog lots, and permits no hogs in this planting. I have thus
secured practical isolation. I have rarely sent swine to fairs or stock
shows. In the few instances in which I have broken this rule I have sold
the stock shown, never returning it to Four Oaks.
Isolation, cleanliness, good food, good water, and a constant supply of
ashes, charcoal, and salt, have kept my herd (thus far) from those
dreadfully fatal diseases that destroy so many swine. If I can keep the
specific micro-organism that causes hog-cholera off my place, I need not
fear the disease. The same is true of swine plague. These diseases are
of bacterial origin, and are communicated by the transference of
bacteria from the infected to the non-infected. I propose to keep my
healthy herd as far removed as possible from all sources of infection. I
have carried these precautions so far that I am often scoffed at. I
require my swineherd, when returning from a fair or a stock show, to
take a full bath and to disinfect his clothing before stepping into the
pig-house. This may seem an unnecessary refinement in precautionary
measures, but I do not think so. It has served me well: no case of
cholera or plague has shown itself at Four Oaks.
What would I do if disease should appear? I do not know. I think,
however, that I should fight it as hard as possible at close quarters,
killing the seriously ill, and burning all bodies. After the scourge had
passed I would dispose of all stock as best I could, and then burn the
entire plant (fences and all), plough deep, cover the land white as snow
with lime, leave it until spring, plough again, and sow to oats. During
the following summer I would rebuild my plant and start afresh. A whole
year would be lost, and some good buildings, but I think it would pay in
the end. There would be no safety for the herd while a single colony of
cholera or plague bacteria was harbored on the place; and while neither
might, for years, appear in virulent form, yet there would be constant
small losses and constant anxiety. One cannot afford either of these
annoyances, and it is usually wise to take radical measures. If we apply
sound business rules to farm management, we shall at least deserve
success.
I chose to keep thoroughbred swine for the reason that all the standard
varieties are reasonably certain to breed true to a type which, in each
breed, is as near pork-making perfection as the widest experience can
make it. Most of our good hogs are bred from English or Chinese stock.
Modifications by climate, care, crossing, and wise selection have
procured a number of excellent varieties, which are distinct enough to
warrant separate names, but which are nearly equal as pork-makers.
In color one could choose between black, black and white, and white and
red. I wanted white swine; not because they are better than swine of
other colors, for I do not think they are, but for æsthetic reasons. My
poultry was to be white, and white predominated in my cows; why should
not my swine be white also,--or as white as their habits would permit? I
am told on all sides that the black hog is the hardiest, that it fattens
easier, and that for these reasons it is a better all-round hog. This
may be true, but I am content with my white ones. When some neighbor
takes a better bunch of hogs to market, or gets a better price for them,
than I do, I may be persuaded to think as he talks. Thus far I have sold
close to the top of the market, and my hogs are never left over.
Perhaps my hogs eat more than those of my neighbors. I hope they do, for
they weigh more, on a "weight for age" scale, and I do not think they
are "air crammed," for "you cannot fatten capons so." I am more than
satisfied with my Chester Whites. They have given me a fine profit each
year, and I should be ungrateful if I did not speak them fair.
I wished to get the hog industry started on a liberal scale, and scoured
the country, by letter, for the necessary animals. I found it difficult
to get just what I wanted. Perhaps I wanted too much. This is what I
asked for: A registered young sow due to farrow her second litter in
March or April. By dint of much correspondence and a considerable outlay
of money, I finally secured nineteen animals that answered the
requirements. I got them in twos and threes from scattered sources, and
they cost an average price of $31 per head delivered at Four Oaks. A
young boar, bred in the purple, cost $27. My foundation herd of Chester
Whites thus cost me $614,--too much for an economical start; but, again,
I was in a hurry.
The hogs began to arrive in February, and were put into temporary
quarters pending the building of the house for the brood sows, which
house must now be described.
It was a low building, 150 by 30 feet, divided by a six-foot alley-way
into halves, each 150 by 12 feet. Each of these halves was again divided
into fifteen pens 10 by 12 feet, with a 10 by 30 run for each pen. This
was the general plan for the brood-house for thirty sows. At the east
end of this house was a room 15 by 30 feet for cooking food and storing
supplies for a few days. The building was of wood with plank floors. It
stands there yet, and has answered its purpose; but it was never quite
satisfactory. I wanted cement floors and a more sightly building. I
shall probably replace it next year. When it was built the weather was
unfavorable for laying cement, and I did not wish to wait for a more
clement season. The house and the fences for the runs cost $2100.
On the 6th of March Thompson called me to one of the temporary pens and
showed me a family of the prettiest new-born animals in the world,--a
fine litter of no less than nine new-farrowed pigs. I felt that the
fourth industry was fairly launched, and that we could now work and
wait.