18 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



There is much less danger of loss, and we think it far bet- 

 ter, to have them dropped in April ; and, if full fed all the 

 time until the first of December, they will dress from three 

 hundred to four hundred pounds. After farrowing, the sow 

 for a few days should be disturbed as little as possible. Her 

 food for the first few days should be warm and sloppy, and 

 small in quantity. If she is doing well, and is quiet, and 

 takes good care of her little grunters, "let well enough 

 alone." After a week or ten days, feed more liberally. 

 Nothing we ever found is equal to skim-milk and oatmeal for 

 making a sow give a large quantity of milk, and the pigs to 

 flourish. Next to this would be corn-meal thoroughly cooked, 

 and made into a gruel, with sufficient bran in it to keep the 

 bowels open, and to give a more glutinous diet. Before the 

 sow farrows, if a rail is placed around the side of the pen one 

 foot from the side, and eight or ten inches high, there is less 

 liability of the mother lying on her young before they have 

 acquired sense or strength enough to avoid the danger. Pigs 

 should not be put to breeding too early : eight or nine 

 months is early enough. If a sow in breeding shows a quiet 

 disposition, and has a reasonable number of pigs, and proves 

 to be a good mother and milker, she should be kept'; for a 

 sow seldom throws her best and most vigorous progeny until 

 she has arrived at the age of two or three years. 



IN-AND-IN BRESDING 



is especially to be avoided, if the breeder wishes to maintain 

 size, vigor, fecundity, and constitution. However successful 

 the practice of in-and-in breeding may have been in improv- 

 ing and establishing certain families and breeds of domestic 

 animals, it is a practice to be carefully avoided by our farm- 

 ers in the breeding of swine. We have known wliat was 

 originally a profitable breed of hogs, dwarfed and deformed 

 by a continued course of this practice, and so completely 

 '•run out" as to be in a few generations comparatively 

 worthless. 



MANAGEMENT OF PIGS. 



While it is highly desirable to start with the right kind of 

 hogs, let the breed be what it may, the fact that the feed 

 makes the hog, to a great or less extent, must not for once 



