180 



VETERINARY HYGIENE 



but this is unnecessary, and many pig-breeders have shown that it 

 is possible to rear healthy pigs on plain cement concrete. The floor 

 should be laid with a gradient to carry off water so as to keep it dry. 



The walls separating the individual pens require to be 4 feet 

 high, with an additional foot for the boar's pen. If built of 

 4 inch thick brick in cement mortar they will be sufficiently strong. 



The flooring of piggeries, as for other animal houses, must be 

 of impervious material, and there is nothing better than cement 

 concrete for both pens and passages. Many pig-keepers prefer 

 ordinary building bricks for the floor of the pens as they are 



FIG. 79. Plan of a farrowing pen showing the position of the guard rail, the 

 food-trough and the weaning pen with food-trough for young pigs enclosed. 

 The guard rail should have supporting ties to the walls. 



warmer than cement. Bricks soon wear unevenly, and the binding 

 material between them works loose. The bricks being very 

 absorbent do not make a floor that is easily kept clean. The floor 

 of the pens must be given a sufficient gradient to carry wash-water 

 and urine into the channel which should be placed outside the pens 

 as shown in the plan. In some piggeries the drain channel is out- 

 side the building at the rear of the pens, in which case the pens 

 should, of course, slope towards it. The former method is the 

 better, and the channel should run as an open drain until it has 

 passed through the building and there discharge over a perforated 

 iron plate into a drain connected with the liquid manure tank, if 

 one is provided, or into the sewer. The passage in the centre of 

 the building must be laid so as to drain into the channels at the side. 



