242 ELEMENTS OF FARM PRACTICE 



reasons. It is expensive both in labor and in feed. It does 

 not provide the exercise necessary for the best development 

 of growing pigs or breeding stock. Last, but not least, 

 it is difficult to find any feed so well adapted to the growing 

 pig as good clover pasture, supplemented with milk from the 

 sow, skimmed milk and good, clean slops thickened with 

 shorts or other muscle-forming feed. 



Pasture. — Red clover furnishes very cheap pasture, 

 because the seed is sown with the preceding grain crop and 

 no plowing or preparation of the land is necessary. Hogs 

 relish young and succulent pasture; and as clover grows 

 very rapidly during the early part of the summer, and the 

 young pigs do not eat as much as they will later, the clover, 

 if tlie pasture is large enough, usually gets ahead of them. 

 It is well, then, to cut with a mower a small strip of the clover 

 next to the pens, early in June. This part will start up soon 

 and furnish the best kind of pasture. The rest may be cut 

 for hay the latter part of June. The second crop will come 

 on, and the hogs will be larger and need more feed than ear- 

 her, and will likely keep pace with the growing clover. 



Rape, rye, field peas or any other of the grain crops 

 furnish |ood annual pasture for hogs, if for any reason 

 one has not the clover. Blue grass and white clover, or 

 bromus and white clover, make very good permanent 

 pastures, if it seems undesirable to rotate the crops and thus 

 supply clover pasture. 



Hgure 107 A — A prize winning Hampshire. 



