3o8 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



rORRESPONDENCE 



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"Bottle Pigs." 



Flemington, New Jersey. 

 To the Editor : 



One of our Chester White sows far- 

 rowed a Htter of seventeen pigs on April 

 Qth, and died two days later, leaving a 

 family of ten, two of whom soon followed 

 her. A post mortem revealed the fact 



warm water and a bit of lime water afford- 

 ed just as good a dinner as "Another used 

 to make." The following day they were 

 fully reconciled to the change of diet, and 

 all the members of the family delighted 

 in feeding them. The quantity was grad- 

 ually increased from twelve ounces every 

 three hours on the first day, to sixty- four 



ATRS. DFATS AND THE "BOTTLK PTGS.' 



that she had died literally of a broken 

 heart, but whether from the largeness or 

 smallness of her family was not deter- 

 mined. 



The babies were apparently a healthy 

 lot, so it was decided that they should 

 be raised by the bottle method. The small 

 boy was dispatched to the drug store in 

 town for a supply of rubber nipples, and 

 as it was "Sunday off" for the man who 

 takes care of the pigs, "the Boss" spent 

 most of that rainy day trying to persuade 

 those pigs that a mixture of Jersey milk, 



ounces (three-fourths whole milk) four 

 times a day, divided as equally as possible 

 between rising and bedtime, until they 

 were four weeks old. Then skim milk 

 with a little wheat shorts was substituted, 

 and they were fed, pig style, from a small 

 trough, and allowed the run of the barn 

 yard. 



After the first week, instead of hand- 

 ling each one separately, as shown in the 

 photograph, holes were bored in the side 

 of packing boxes, a sloping floor nailed 

 inside, and the pigs gathered around the 



