California Horticulturist and Live Stock Journal, 



mmxL 



Wheat and Vegetables for Hogs. 



M FAKMER in Tennessee writing to the 



\' I!ur<d Sun tells how a neighbor fattened 

 his hogs on wheat with turnips. Any 



iP other vegetable with wheat would do 

 as well as turnips, which are less nutri- 

 tive than mangle wurtzels and other beets, 

 which will grow in California better than tur- 

 nips will, and with greater profits for feed. 



Beets sown on good soil in Februarj' or the 

 latter part of January on the dry lands in 

 California will, by the advantage of an early 

 start and fair growth before the end of the 

 rainy season, make a good crop where wheat 

 or barley will grow without irrigation. Any 

 farmer that can grow wheat can grow beets, 

 and wheat and beets together are as good as 

 wheat and turnips. 



We venture the assertion that wheat is the 

 best single grain to fatten hogs on that grows, 

 and also that there is no branch of farming 

 that will pay better in this State, where not 

 one-sixth of the pork used is produced, than 

 raising and fattening hogs. 



Our soils are prolific, and with proper man- 

 agement can be made to produce as much 

 solid hog-feed to the acre as the corn lands of 

 Missouri, in wheat, peas and barley, and 

 beets and squashes. 



We extract from the letter in the Rural Sun, 

 and hope our farmers may be instructed to 

 their good: 



Fat Hogs — Turnips and Ground Wheat. 

 Col. Boyd of Marshall county failed in his 

 corn crop this year, and is fattening his hogs 

 on turnips and wheat. He cuts up the tur- 

 nijis and tops, to which he adds one bushel 

 of ground wheat for each twenty hogs, as the 

 daily rations, the turnips in quantity as much 

 as they will eat. The mixture is thoroughly 

 cooked and fed cool, on which he thinks he 

 can m.ake his hogs as fat in slHy dai/s as he 

 could on corn in ninety. He has never known 

 hogs to fatten as rapidly when fed on corn or 

 any thing else. To feed twenty hogs ninety 

 days, the usual time, would require at least 

 lifteen bushels of corn each, or three hundred 

 bushels for the twenty. Col. Boyd, to reach 

 the same results, would feed sixty days and 

 consume sixty hushci'i of wlxeat, added to a full 

 supply of turnips, which are of but compara- 

 tive little value. You see in fattening twenty 

 hogs, a clean saving of two hundred and forty 

 bushels of grain by Col. Boyd's mode of feed- 

 ing turnips and wittat. 



Feeding Swine. — One of the important 

 things in feeding hogs, and indeed all animals, 

 is to feed regularly. They have no clocks,aud 

 are not supposed to observe the sun and stars 

 very closely, still hogs are not ignorant of the 

 flight of time, and they reckou very accurately 

 as to the hours for meals. If accustomed to 

 be fed at six o'clock in the morniug, twelve at 

 noon, .-ind six at night, they want their food 

 pretty jiromptly at these hoursf, and will grunt 

 and grumble if they don't have it. This 

 grunibliug must be avoided, for it wears off 

 more tli'sh from men and hogs than is com- 

 monly supposed. We have been amused on 

 going into hog pens, when the hogs are fed 

 regularly, to notice how little attention they 

 ]iay to visiti>rs at any time except meal hours. 

 They sleep right on, and it sometimes re- 

 quires some hard pokes to arouse them, and 

 when aroused they ar<' as apt to make for the 

 door as the trough. On the other hand, hogs 

 fed irregularly are on the (/ui vivc to see if 

 somebody has not brought them something 



good to eat. Hogs are creatures of habit.and 

 they may be accustomed to t^vo or three, or 

 half a dozen meals a day. We should cer- 

 tainly prefer three to half a dozen. Feeding 

 them every time we pass the hog pen, as is the 

 custom of some, is a weariness to the Uesh of 

 both man and beast. 



Quality in Pork. — We all know what a 

 ditl'erence there is in pork. Breed has some- 

 thing to do in this matter, but not so much as 

 many suppose. It is the kind of feed that 

 makes the quality in pork. Use milk or whey 

 largel}' and your pork is sure to be soft, flab- 

 by, and will fry away at least half. What is 

 left is not relishable. Hence our dairy pork 

 is our poorest pork, varying according to the 

 amount of grain that is fed. So still-fed pork 

 is in bad repute. Miscellaneous feed makes 

 ordinary pork, often quite ordinary. Slop 

 will not do, there seems to be too much water. 



The grains are what is wanted to make good, 

 sweet pork — pork that is solid and will fry 

 well. Hank pork is unendurable, and yet 

 there is much of it, and some people like it, 

 like the pork from large, strong hogs. 



A dirty, offensive sty is an element, no 

 doubt, of producing strong and even ftetid 

 pork. 



Have clean quarters, a clean animal, good 

 ventilation and feed grain. For drink, give 

 cold, not in any way foul, water. Do not 

 house too closely, nor feed too sharply ; look 

 to the couveuience of the hog, and fat him so 

 that he is in good condition. 



A noG in Dubuque slipped up stairs into a 

 house where a party was being held, and got 

 into the room where the eatables were stored, 

 which he proceeded to devour. The Telegraph 

 says the hog was chased until he was caught, 

 but the delicacies he had eaten could not be 

 recovered. This is the strange part of the 

 affair. 



fij^cicultuviJ* 



Care of Cold Fish. 



'ILL some of your readers answer the 

 following questions: What is the aver- 

 J/ age life of gold fish'/ Should the 

 '^ aquarium be set in the sun or in the 

 shade? Do they need hard or soft 

 water? Do they need to be fed daily? If so, 

 what is the best food? M. B. 



Seth Green is reported to have given the 

 following directions for the management of 

 gold fish : Use any well, creek or river water 

 that is not impregnated with mineral. Change 

 the water when the fish c(mie to the top and 

 stay there, and breathe jiart water and part 

 air. Take out nearly all the water, leaving 

 enough for the fish to swim in, and fill the 

 vessel with fresh water. Never take the fish 

 in j'our hand. If the aquarium needs clean- 

 ing, make a not of mosquito netting, and take 

 the fish out in it. There are many gold fish 

 killed by handling. Keep your aquarium 

 clean, so that the water looks as clear as crys- 

 tal. Watch the fish a little, and you will find 

 out when they are aU right. Feed them all 

 they will eat and anything they will eat, meat, 

 worms, fish wafer, or fish spawn. Take great 

 care that you take all that they do not eat out 

 of the aquarium. Any decayed meat or veg- 

 etable in the water has the same smell to fish 

 that it has to you in the air. If your gold 

 fish die, it is attributalile, as a rule, to one of 

 three causes — handling, starvation, or bad 

 water. — liural New Yorker. 



There is something very sensible iu the im- 

 pronjptu rt'mark of a young lady: "If o;ir 

 Maker thought it wrong for Adaui to remain 

 single when there was no woman on earth, 

 how criminally wrong arc the old bachelors, 

 with the world full of pretty girls." 



The Createst Crop in the World. 



A question widely discussed involves the 

 relative value of the wheat, cotton, tea and 

 hay crops of the world. Which of these pro- 

 duces employs the greatest amount of the 

 world's capital? It is said that hay leads the 

 rest, and the items that enter into the account 

 as stated are somewhat startling, and will 

 make a Granger's hair stand on end. Cotton 

 and tea are local crops, while hay is produced 

 everywhere the world over, and thus the hay 

 crop greatly out-weiahs either of the other 

 two. The aggregate reported value of all 

 farm products in the United States, for 1870, 

 was $2,447,538,0.58; but as this includes ad- 

 ditions to stock, "betterments," etc., it is 

 probably too high. Now, the hay crop for 

 that year — that is, the grass dried and cured 

 for use or sale — is reported at over 27,000,000 

 tons. This, at half the selling price in the 

 large cities, would amount to $405,000,000, 

 and is far greater th.an the aggregate home 

 value of the cotton crop or any other crop. 

 But the cured " hay" is but a portion of the 

 grass crop. The other portion is used on the 

 ground, and it requires considerable calcula- 

 tion to get at thf value so used, even in the 

 roughest way. In the first place, live stock, 

 including horned cattle, horses, sheep, swine, 

 etc,, tothevalue of $1,-525,000,000, were fed 

 from it that year. Averaging the lives of 

 these at five years, we have one-fifth of that 

 sum as representing the grass fed to them iu 

 1870, viz: $305,000,000; next we find the value 

 of the animals slaugtitered for food in that 

 year to be $300,000,000, and as this is an an- 

 nual product, the whole of it wdl, for the pre- 

 sent, be credited to the grass crop; next we 

 find that the butter crop of 1870 was 514,000,- 

 000 pounds, which, at the low average of 25 

 cents, amounts to $128,000,000, and this goes 

 to the credit of grass; next we have 2:35,000,- 

 000 gallons of milk, which averaged at the 

 low estimate of 10 cents per gallon, adds $25,- 

 000,000 more to the credit of tfie grass crop; 

 then we have 100,000,000 pounds of wool at 

 25 cents per pound, adding $25,000,000 more; 

 and, finally, 53,000,000 pounds of cheese, at 

 10 cents, adding over $5,000'000 to the total 

 credits to the grass crop of 1870, which ag- 

 gregates $887,000,000. Now, let us add the 

 value of the " hay" crop as given above, viz. : 

 $405,000,000, anil we have a grand total for 

 "hay" and the products of grass consumed 

 on the ground of $1,292,000,000! This is, 

 of course, subject to deduction, as the meat, 

 butter, milk, cheese, and wool-producing ani- 

 mals consume other food besides grass and 

 hay. To make ample allowance for this, we 

 deduct the entii'e value of the corn and oat 

 crops of 1870, estimated at $270,000,000, and 

 this leaves a remainder of $1,082,000,000 to 

 be ereditod to the haj' and grass crop of that 

 year, when the reported aggregate of all farm 

 products was $2,447,528,058. If our esti- 

 mates make even the roughest approach to 

 accuracy, the value of that crop was two- 

 fifths of the aggregate value of all farm pro- 

 ducts, and hence we may infer that two-fifths 

 of the capital then invested in agiicultural 

 pursuits was devoted to the grass crop, aiui 

 this, in the United States, equals (iu round 

 numbers) $4,575,0()O,O00r From these figures 

 the deduction is jialpable that King t^otton is 

 uncrowned and ilethroued, and we may bo 

 forced to admit that all "flesh" and all else is 

 hay, if not "grass." — Hay, Straw and Orain 

 lieporter. 



Wasaino Windows. — In washing windows 

 or otli<>r gfass, never use soap unless it can be 

 thoroughly rinsed olV; wash ott the dirt in 

 clean warm water; after the glass is dry, nd) 

 with a little paste or whiting and water, in the 

 center of each pane. With another cloth 

 rinse over the glass, then rub with a dry cloth 

 till it shines like crystal. 



