966 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



SWINE HOUSING* AND FATTENING*. 



HOG-HOUSES and Pens. To insure success with 

 young pigs, good shelter must be provided. An incalcu- 

 lable number of pigs are lost every year for the want of 

 this. A good hog-house can be made so cheaply that no farm 

 should be without one or more. I have experimented consider- 

 ably to ascertain the best and cheapest way to build a piggery, 

 and have finally settled on a plan that combines economy and 

 convenience, and possesses, in my judgment, more good points 

 than any I have ever seen. In visiting and inspecting hog- 

 houses before I had put up any, I found in nearly every in- 

 stance that they were too expensive, and often that they were 

 badly located or defective in some way, that they were not ar- 

 ranged so as to economize space, or to be convenient to clean; 

 or that they were so situated as to allow the manure to waste, 

 or so managed as to be an offense to the nostrils. I have vis- 

 ited farms where the hog-house was as strongly framed as the 

 barn, with sills a foot square, and eight-inch posts, and the frame 

 alone, without a board or shingle on it, cost as much as the 

 completed building should. 



I have built during the last twenty-five years six hog-houses 

 on my own farms, and in the later built ones I have secured better 

 accommodations than in those I built first, and at half the cost. 

 Instead of building one large, elaborate building, I prefer two 

 or more smaller ones, as may be necessary. One reason for 

 this is that I think it an advantage to be able to move the hog- 

 house occasionally, as the ground is likely, in the course of 

 years to become contaminated, and such a house as I build can 

 be moved two or three times its length at an expense of two or 



