The frame of this building is of strong timber, and stout for its size.
The sills should be 8 inches square, the corner posts of the same size,
and the intermediate posts 8x6 inches in diameter. In the center of
these posts, grooves should be made, 2 inches wide, and deep, to receive
the _plank_ sides, which should be 2 inches thick, and let in from the
level of the chamber by a flush cutting for that purpose, out of the
grooves inside, thus using no nails or spikes, and holding the planks
tight in their place, that they may not be rooted out, or rubbed off by
the hogs, and the inner projection of the main posts left to serve as
rubbing posts for them--for no creature so loves to rub his sides, when
fatting, as a hog, and this very natural and praiseworthy propensity
should be indulged. These planks, like the posts, should, particularly
the lower ones, be of _hard_ wood, that they may not be eaten off. Above
the chamber floor, thinner planks may be used, but all should be well
jointed, that they may lie snug, and shut out the weather. The center
post in the floor plan of the engraving is omitted, by mistake, but it
should stand there, like the others. Inside posts at the corners, and in
the sides of the partitions, like the outside ones, should be also
placed and grooved to receive the planking, four and a half feet high,
and their upper ends be secured by tenons into mortices in the beams
overhead. The troughs should then, if possible, be made of _cast iron_,
or, in default of that, the hardest of white oak plank, strongly spiked
on to the floor and sides; and the apartment may then be called
hog-proof--for a more unquiet, destructive creature, to a building in
which he is confined, does not live, than the hog. The slide, or spout
to conduct the swill and other feed from the feeding-room into the
trough, should be inserted through the partition planks, with a steep
_slant_ the whole length of the trough, that the feed may be readily
thrown into any or all parts of it. This slide should be of two-inch
white-oak plank, and bound along the bottom by a strip of hoop-iron, to
prevent the pigs from eating it off--a habit they are prone to; then,
firmly spiked down to the partition planks, and through the ends, to the
adjoining studs, and the affair is complete. With what experience we
have had with the hog, and that by no means an agreeable one, we can
devise no better method of accommodation than this here described, and
it certainly is the cheapest. But the timber and lumber used must be
sound and strong; and then, properly put together, it may defy their
most destructive ingenuity. Of the separate uses to which the various
apartments may be put, nothing need be said, as the circumstances of
every farmer will best govern them.
One, to three hundred dollars, according to price of material and labor,
will build this piggery, besides fitting it up with furnace and boilers.
It may be contracted, or enlarged in size, as necessity may direct; but
no one, with six to twenty porkers in his fatting pens, a year, will
regret the expense of building a convenient appurtenance of this kind to
his establishment.
A word may be pardoned, in relation to the too universal practice of
permitting swine to prowl along the highways, and in the yards and lawns
of the farm house. There is nothing so slovenly, wasteful, and
destructive to one's thrift, and so demoralizing, in a small way, as is
this practice. What so revolting to one, of the least tidy nature
whatever, as a villainous brute, with a litter of filthy pigs at her
heels, and the slimy ooze of a mud-puddle reeking and dripping from
their sides? See the daubs of mud marking every fence-post, far and
near, along the highway, or where-ever they run! A burrow is rooted up
at every shady point, a nuisance at every corner you turn, and their
abominable snouts into everything that is filthy, or obscene--a living
curse to all that is decent about them. An Ishmaelite among the farm
stock, they are shunned and hated by every living thing, when at large.
But, put the creature in his pen, with a ring in his nose, if permitted
to go into the adjoining yard, and comfortably fed, your pig, if of a
civilized breed, is a quiet, inoffensive--indeed, gentlemanly sort of
animal; and as such, he is entitled to our toleration--regard, we cannot
say; for in all the pages of our reading, we learn, by no creditable
history, of any virtuous sympathies in a hog.