198 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



can so arrange the matter as to have our sows breed 

 together, or within eight or ten days of each other. Now, 

 then, what have we got on our hands at farrowing time? 

 We must sit up nights, and watch ; for the intelligent 

 breeder wants to be right there day and night, and 

 when he knows just the time when the young animals 

 are to appear to life it is no great sacrifice to sit up eight 

 or ten nights. While the animal is pregnant care should 

 be taken that she is not turned with the herd of feeders, for 

 she may be overlaid by the other pigs, and that will often 

 cause abortion. In the West many farmers manage their 

 breeders in an abusive way. They have large straw stacks, 

 and you will often see from one hundred to one hundred 

 and fifty hogs piled up in the different parts of a straw 

 stack, and a man comes with a basket of corn in the 

 morning just before breakfast, when the thermometer is 

 twenty to forty degrees below zero, to feed the hogs. 

 He throws out the corn and calls ' ' Pig ! Pig ! " and here 

 they come, steaming and fuming and sweating, from a 

 temperature of at least one hundred and twenty degrees. 

 I wonder if those men ever think, if they were turned 

 from their beds out of doors in the same way, what would 

 happen to them. And then they complain that their hogs 

 have pneumonia. There are men who have the pernicious 

 habit of letting their hogs sleep in the manure pile, where 

 the ammonia is constantly arising from the manure, spoiling 

 their breathing organs ; and they wonder why it is that the 

 hogs cough and get sick. If you have such pens as I 

 have recommended, you will not have any trouble of this 

 kind. I presume there are men in Massachusetts who need 

 this instruction. I do not mean in this audience, for I gen- 

 erally find that the institutes and the conventions are 

 attended by the best and most intelligent class of farmers, 

 and the man who stands in the greatest need of instruction 

 is never there. But, notwithstanding, I believe that these 

 remarks are in place here. I believe that it # is our 

 duty to provide information for the man that needs it, 

 whether he will profit by it or not. That is why these 

 meetings are instituted. Then, I say, feed the young sow 

 intelligently and by herself, and when she has proved a 



