246 MACON COUNTY, ILLINOIS. 



counselors to a man in straightened circumstances), I concluded 

 to turn over, as the saying is, a new leaf. I ordered some 

 improved hogs of the Poland China stock. I handled a few 

 cattle, for the purpose of using up the roughness that would 

 otherwise have gone to waste, but made hogs a specialty, and 

 although I have from year to year sold many for brood pur- 

 poses, I never realized what is called fancy prices, — the bulk 

 of them having been sold in the usual way. But from the 

 time I commenced to handle the hogs to the present, I have 

 been measurably successful, having lived better, made more 

 and better improvements, and so far diminished my indebted- 

 ness as to remove all mortgages and incumbrances from the 

 title to the land, being able long since to pay the balance of 

 my indebtedness. So much for the general history of my 

 operations. 



HOGS. 



As to my plan of managing hogs so as to have made them 

 profitable, let me say that I have built no expensive hog 

 hduses, and have rarely cooked any food ; outside of a liberal 

 use of mill-food, consisting of bran, ship-stuff and shorts, 

 five dollars will pay for all condiments, — oil-cake, sugar, and 

 molasses, — fed to my hogs in the last ten years. I have 

 labored at all times to make them comfortable in their pens, 

 studied to keep them well fed, well watered, well slopped, 

 and clear of all filth, both in their food and quarters. The result 

 is that in all that time I have had no touch of the disease 

 called cholera, and little or no "sty fever," excepting that 

 occasionally a few sows after farrowing liave been overfed, and 

 as a consequence, the litters Avould have the scours. I have 

 rarely had a pig or a hog die of any disease. Fifty dollars 

 will pay for all the lumber used in constructing hog houses 

 and pens that I ever built. 



I have about a dozen shed pens, six by seven feet, with an 

 open feed floor in front ; these pens are for the sows in farrow- 

 ing time, and during the Winter we use them for sleeping 

 quarters for the store hogs. 



