SELECTION OF SIRE — PEXS. 289 



kind of hogs, and a suitable place for keeping them where 

 they can be kept healthy. The right kind of hogs is easily 

 obtained, and there are plenty of farms where they can be 

 handled to advantage, but how to keep them healthy is the 

 great problem. In endeavoring to solve this problem, I begin 

 when my pigs are but a few days old, in March and April, and 

 by a judicious use of a. small club, I allow none but healthy, 

 vigorous ones to grow up. Then, when selecting ray breeding 

 sows, I make a bright, healthy, vigorous look the first point, 

 and then take such of them as have other points to suit me. 



SELECTION OF SIRE. 



The boar, too, must be chosen with care, for, as he comes 

 generally from a stock with which you are not acquainted, you 

 have only the individual specimen to judge by. I would much 

 rather go to a man's farm and purchase my pig, than to buy 

 him at a fair, as then I could see his whole stock ; but generally 

 we have to select from pigs fitted up for show. Several times 

 I have found that the pig I had bought Avas only a sham, 

 and when he was put into proper stock order he was not such 

 a pig as I would use, and I have had to buy again. 



PENS. 



I have always taken care that my pigs should have dry, 

 well-ventilated places to sleep in, keeping them clean, by often 

 sweeping them out, and disinfecting with copperas or carbolic 

 acid. I also keep salt and ashes, and copperas and sulphur, 

 all the time, where all my pigs can help themselves to it, and 

 take or leave it, as they choose. They generally consume a 

 good deal, so that I buy by the barrel. I market most of my 

 pigs at eleven or twelve months old, making them average 

 about three hundred pounds ; this being the way to get the 

 most money for the corn fed, according to my experience. 

 My accounts show that my pigs consume twenty-four and one- 

 third bushels of corn per liead, and make twelve and one-third 

 pounds live weight per bushel of corn fed. I feed corn on the 

 cob, dry, the pigs going to the spring run, close by, for their 



