940 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



Two weeks before the pigs are due the sow should be sep- 

 arated from the herd. If it is a season when she can get green 

 food she will do best in a grass lot, and a good shelter should 

 be provided for her to nest in. The more you can handle the 

 sow and accustom her to your presence in the pen the better, 

 as it may be necessary for you to go to her assistance at far- 

 rowing time, and if she has never been handled she will be 

 likely to become excited and unmanageable, and destroy her pigs. 

 The less she is disturbed at this time the better, and I would 

 never interfere unless it becomes absolutely necessary. 



If the sow must be kept in a pen and no green food can be 

 had, let the food be cooling and loosening rather than heating 

 and constipating. There is no worse food than corn, and none 

 better than bran and roots. It is of still greater moment that 

 strict attention be paid to the diet for the first week after the 

 pigs come. Too heavy feeding, especially of corn, is likely to 

 produce indigestion and induce fever, which dries the milk and 

 leaves the pigs to starve. Whole litters are lost more fre- 

 quently by over-feeding the sows after pigging than from any, 

 or perhaps even all other causes. I think there are many far- 

 mers who lose pigs from over-feeding the sow who do not sus- 

 pect the cause. They notice that the sow does not eat well, 

 and that the pigs, after perhaps thriving for a few days, begin 

 to dwindle and die off one after another till the entire litter is 

 gone. I make it an invariable rule never to feed more than a 

 single ear of corn at a feed the first week, and regulate care- 

 fully the quality and quantity of the slop. It is a time when 

 the owner should attend to the feeding and not entrust it to the 

 boys or hired men. Another cause of loss of young pigs, which 

 is not generally understood, is that they become too fat and die 

 of " thumps " or some kindred ailment, and this is due, I think, 

 to the fact that the sows are fed exclusively on corn, which 

 produces very rich milk, and that the pigs get no exercise. 



By the time the pigs are ten days old they should be 

 allowed the run of a lot, and if you have a blue-grass pasture 

 to turn the mother in it is the best place for her. If the sow 

 must be kept shut up, open a crack and let the pigs run out. 



