No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 601 



years, as well as the answer to it, and we never have any misunder- 

 standing with any one over what he ordered. 



SELECTION OF THE BROOD SOW. 



When you go out in the lot to select a few more sows from your 

 herd to use for breeders, do not always select the plumpest, fattest 

 one that looks so nice; she will not make as good a mother or breeder 

 as one that is a little longer in body or a little more motherly in her 

 appearance. In fact, I would not select them till nearly or quite a 

 year old. In our own experience we have bred very few young sow 

 pigs and usually kept them till near a year old before breeding, be- 

 lieving that the selection of too young a sow and breeding to a young 

 boar will not produce as good litters or as good pigs as when from 

 mature or nearly mature animals. This I believe is one of the rea- 

 sons of the general fineness and extremely small litters that are 

 found in many of our herds today. It is not in accordance with 

 nature. Many of the large growers of hogs in the corn belt of Illi- 

 nois have made a practice for years of selling the brood sows each 

 fall and selecting from the spring pigs a large number of young 

 sows from six to seven months old, and then breeding to a boar of 

 about the same age till they have reduced both the size of their ani- 

 mals as well as the size of the litters, and also the stamnia of their 

 hogs, and today are getting litters of two and three pigs instead of 

 litters of five to ten good strong ones. In our own herd when we 

 find a sow that is a good mother and raises a fairly good-sized litter 

 and takes good care of them, we keep her as long as she lives, unless 

 some appreciative customer comes along and offers a tempting price. 



We had a customer last month that came over a thousand miles 

 to buy brood sows of us, and took three at from |200 to |250 each 

 that were well along in years. Of course, these sows were bred to 

 a most remarkable boar, for which we paid $1,000 in cash, and is 

 conceded by nearly every prominent breeder to be without an equal 

 in the breed, and sows bred to him are in great demand- from all parts 

 of the country 



After the brood sows are selected and bred they should be fed 

 with a view to the future good of the litter, and should have a ration 

 that will produce bone, flesh and frame instead of fat alone, and for 

 this a combination of feeds should be used which contain the proper 

 nutriments, such as wheat middlings, or what is known as ship stuff, 

 or ground oats with corn meal with a little bran, but under no con- 

 sideration feed corn and corn alone, or your sow will, when she 

 comes to farrow, bring a litter of weakly, squealing, puny things 

 that will not have vitality enough to get to their dinner, and the 

 sow herself will be feverish and likely eat every pig as it comes near 

 her. Sows should, during the winter, have something to take the 

 place of grass, and with us we can fihd nothing better than well 

 cured clover hay or alfalfa, run through a power cutter and mixed 

 with the feed, or even fed separate. We also use some sorghum, 

 which is relished by the hogs, and it is astonishing how much of these 

 rough feeds a herd of 100 or more hogs will consume. 



We used to grow sugar beets for this purpose, and they are a 

 grand feed, but the farmer of the West will not get down on his 

 knees and weed beets for hogs, or even for a sugar factory, and we 

 have given it up. 

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