No. 4.] SWINE BREEDING AND FEEDING. 201 



the farmers of the State of Wisconsin of three millions of 

 dollars to simply sustain the life of these hogs." " Go and 

 talk hogs to them," said the governor. 



Trough room comes in here, as a very essential point. 

 As a rule, every farmer who is breeding hogs has in his 

 stable a large, deep trough. When the agricultural papers 

 talk about "trough room," they do not mean a great, big, 

 deep trough. I often blame these papers for not saying 

 what they really mean. They mean a trough of sufficient 

 length to give every hog a place, and room to eat in it. 

 This reminds me of a scene I witnessed the other day. Permit 

 me to break off for a moment and describe it. While I was 

 driving through my own county I stopped at a farm where a 

 boy was feeding about one hundred and fifty pigs ; shoats, 

 breeding sows and hogs of every kind, all together in one 

 muddy yard. Now, we do not do things at the West any 

 better than you do them here, and not half as well some- 

 times. Here were all kinds of hogs, large and small 

 together, and the boy was attempting to feed them with 

 swill. The man had good barns, but hogs, you know, 

 ought to be in the mud. That is what is the matter. The 

 boy was attempting to pour a pail of swill into a twenty- 

 foot trough. What kind of a time do you think he had ? 

 The hogs were everywhere, and the more he tried to get at 

 the trough the more excited they became. The boy got out 

 of patience, cursed the hogs, and threw the pail, swill and 

 all, among them. By that time a boy on the other side of 

 the rail fence was driving in a team with corn for the morn- 

 ing feed. The hogs had made a failure with the swill, and 

 they saw the team coming, and knew what was in it, and 

 made a rush, tumbling over each other in their haste, the 

 larger and stronger fighting away the smaller and weaker, 

 and all squealing most vigorously. The boy grabbed his 

 shovel and began throwing the corn out into the mud on one 

 side and the other, with the hogs rushing hither and thither 

 after it. That is one method of hos; feedino;. 



Trough room means a trough of sufficient length so that 

 every hog has a place to eat ; and in all breeding stables 

 where the breeding sow is fed, a trough made out of 

 plank two by six or two by eight, V-shaped and seven or 



