Hogs are evil in their propensities, mischievous and filthy in their
habits, and yet profitable to the farmer. Every farmer should keep a few
in proportion to the refuse grain and various slops that his
establishment may afford. Buying hogs and then purchasing grain on which
to fatten them in the usual way is the poorest economy. Such pork is
often made to cost from twelve to twenty cents per pound.
There are many breeds of swine highly recommended. Some of the varieties
of the Chinese are the most prolific and have the greatest tendency to
fattening of any known. They have formed the basis of the great
improvements in the breeds in Great Britain. Farmers will be able to
select the best breed from their own knowledge and observation, better
than from any directions we can give them. Every new variety will be
introduced by dealers, and farmers must be cautious how they accept
their representations.
_Age of Swine for Pork._--It is most profitable and least troublesome,
to keep over winter, no swine but breeding sows, to have pigs early in
spring, to kill in autumn. Of any of the good breeds, they can be made
to weigh from 300 to 350 pounds, by the proper time for killing. The
practice of keeping swine till eighteen or twenty-four months old, and
only fattening them late in the fall and beginning of winter, is very
unprofitable. It is best to give pigs about what they will eat, from the
time of beginning to feed them until they are slaughtered. This is in
every way most economical. It secures fattening in the hot weather in
summer, when pork can be made faster and cheaper than at any other time.
Many farmers begin to fatten their pork, after the season in which it
can most rapidly and cheaply be done.
Hogs having been kept poor, on being fed freely for fattening, become
cloyed, and much time is lost, while those that always have had what
they would eat, of good wholesome food, always have a good appetite for
as much as they need, and not root over and injure more.
_Food for Swine._--They do better shut up in a pen, but where they can
get access to the ground. All edible roots are good and all the grains.
But grain should be ground or soaked. It pays well to cook all food for
swine. Boiled potatoes, carrots, beets, and parsnips, are all good.
Ground feed should be mixed with cooked vegetables. The disposition that
swine have to root deep in the ground, indicates the want of something,
not found in sufficient quantities in their ordinary food. Numerous
experiments show that that deficiency is abundantly supplied by having
charcoal within their reach. The stories of fattening pork wholly on
charcoal, which we find in the books, we do not credit. But that small
quantities of it are uniformly healthy for swine, is an established
fact. The question of sour food has many respectable advocates.
Cultivators and writers take different sides of the question, based as
they say upon their carefully-tried and noted experiments, one affirming
that fermented food is superior, and others that it has done his hogs
positive injury. This discrepancy grows out of not carefully
distinguishing the different kinds of fermentation, the sweet, the
vinous, the acid, and the putrid. The first makes excellent food, the
second will do quite well, the third is injurious, and the last
absolutely poisonous. As it requires much care and observation to get
this right, and mistakes are easy, it is best to take the sure method,
give them food in a natural state, ground, and either cooked or fed raw.
Either will make good pork at a reasonable cost, but cooked food is
preferable.
Sows are prevented from destroying their young by quiet, plenty of food,
and little animal food, and but a very little straw in a dry pen, or
washing the pig's backs with a strong decoction of aloes.