206 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



nitrogenous food. Then it is that the pig pays the farmer 

 handsomely by preparing itself for the market. When I 

 am about through with the peas, I commence throwing 

 over the sweet corn which I grow in an adjoining field. 

 Before they are through with cleaning off the peas I get 

 them used to the corn. I still feed them their swill nights 

 and mornings in the stable. In the winter time I feed 

 steamed food ; for we cannot afford, in our cold climate, to 

 feed cold food. I have seen men pour swill out into a 

 trough, and the next morning take an axe and chop 

 out the stuff they had put in and throw it away. I 

 find there is a difference between your situation and 

 mine, which affects the question of feeding steamed or 

 cooked food to hogs. I am informed that many feeders of 

 swine in this vicinity feed city swill. I have no experience 

 with that sort of food. But under the usual condition* 

 upon the farm it always pays to cook food in the winter for 

 pigs, because it makes the food easier of assimilation and 

 easier of digestion. I use a good deal of charcoal. I burn 

 it myself. I save all my cobs when I shell my corn, and 

 put them in a dry place. I dig a hole five feet deep, a foot 

 in diameter at the bottom and five feet at the top. I have a 

 sheet-iron cover that I riveted together myself, that covers 

 the hole. I set a fire in this hole and commence to fill in 

 the cobs. I draw the fire up by gradually filling in the 

 cobs until the hole is full. It will take about twenty-five 

 bushels of cobs to fill it. When the hole is full I put on 

 the sheet-iron cover and seal it up with dirt air-tight. The 

 next morning I have from twelve to fourteen bushels of the 

 best of charcoal. I take five or six bushels of this cob 

 charcoal (when I used wood charcoal I took about three 

 bushels) and break it with a shovel on the floor, add a 

 bushel of wood ashes, eight quarts of salt and two quarts of 

 slacked lime to it. Mix this thoroughly while it is in a dry 

 state, and then take a pound and a quarter of copperas, 

 dissolve it in a large pail of hot water ; take a sprinkler and 

 sprinkle this solution over the mixture which I have 

 described before, and mix it thoroughly, so as not to get 

 the copperas all in one place. Put this mixture in a box 

 and set it where your hogs can have free access to it, and you 



