TENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IV 129 



enough dirt so that tlie wire is not in the way of bedding and 

 cleaning. Occasionally a self-willed sow will root into that, but as 

 a rule they don't bother much. 



Q. I would like to ask if any one has ever tried putting a 

 rough cement floor down and then covering it with a little dirt, 

 in the same way that the woven wire is covered? The old sow 

 could never root that up. The dirt would stick to the cement 

 floor and give her warmth. 



]Mr. Gunn : I would think that would be a dusty floor pretty 

 soon. I will simply state that in my hog house I have a cement 

 floor, but in the small pens where my pigs are born I lay common 

 boards over half or two-thirds of the space, and when the season 

 is over I take them up and put them overhead, and there they are 

 till I want them the next spring again. I lay strips under them 

 until they are about an inch or so from the cement floor. That 

 makes a warm place to put the bedding and keeps them off the 

 cement floor. 



Q. How near the same time do you aim to have all your pigs 

 come ? 



Mr. Gunn: You will find where you have a great many sows 

 that it doesn 't seem to make much difference how you breed them ; 

 about every three weeks a new batch of pigs comes. If you watch 

 and keep them by themselves, you will get pigs of nearly the same 

 age. You can probably get one hundred to one hundred and fifty 

 pigs that won't vary five days in their age. 



Q. Then you keep those pigs by themselves as you market them "? 

 Mr. Gunn: No; they will all get together finally in the fall. 



Q. How do you handle the slop in large quantities, in barrels or 

 tank-wagons ? 



Mr. Gunn : I use barrels. A tank-wagon is apt to get neglected, 

 and I use barrels on a low truck — one, tAvo or three, according to 

 how much slop I have to use. Sometimes it will take ten barrels 

 to do the feeding before I am through, but of course I can't carry 

 but three on my wagon at a time. It is so much easier to rinse 

 out a barrel and keep it sweet than it is a tank-wagon. I never 

 used a tank-wagon, but I can readily see how it would get sour 

 on you. 

 3 



