THE SOW : SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT 1 43 



farmer or breeder, except as they may be a valuable in- 

 dication to customers that his hogs are of prolific strains 

 rather than the opposite, which is not infrequent in herds 

 of pure-breds. In his judgment a sow that successively 

 gi\-es birtli to litters of eight ijr nine, or even se\'en uni- 

 form, \-igorous pigs and brings them to the weaning age 

 well nourished, growthy and robust, meets all reasonable 

 re(juirements as a mother and far exceeds the average. 

 In theory the extra large litters may be more than ordi- 

 narily profitable, but in everyday practice and in the 

 long run not one man in a hundred finds them so. 



O. B. Johnson of Hendricks county, Indiana, owned a 

 sow that within seven months had 40 pigs. In the first 

 litter there were 19, and in the next 21. 



\V. P. Hollenbeck of Schoharie county, New York, 

 had a sow that in a little more than two years farrowed 

 y^ pigs, in five consecutive litters, of 14, 17, 14, 15 and 18 

 respecti^•ely. 



A Cheshire sow belonging to E. C. Carpenter of Berk- 

 shire county, Massachusetts, when 25^^ months old, had 

 given birth to 61 pigs in four litters, numbering 15. 14, 

 15 and 17 respectively. 



Walter Bros, of Warren county, Ohio, owned a Du- 

 roc-Jersey sow that farrowed 14. 10 and 18 pigs, or a 

 total of 42 in less than one year. 



H. L. Ives of Barton county, Kansas, had a Duroc- 

 Jersey that farrowed 13 pigs; then a second litter of 12, 

 and a third litter of 20, or a total of 45 pigs in 1 1 months 

 and fi\e days, ^^dlen this was all done she was but 23 

 months and ten davs old. Fnun the three litters she 



