No. 4.] SWINE BREEDING AND FEEDING. 217 



Mr. Marshall. This is my first opportunity to speak 

 to such a body of men as I see before me. I took a 

 fancy to swine breeding a few years ago while at the 

 Agricultural College, where they have fine animals, which are 

 grown as near to perfection as possible. I saw there some of 

 the Yorkshire breed, and I took home two of them. Since 

 then I have purchased two elsewhere. I found that I could 

 use a few breeding hogs on my place to advantage by rais- 

 ing pork ; or, in other words, raising a fancy lot of pigs. 

 So I went to work and built on the south side of the barn a 

 shed about sixty-five feet long and fifteen feet in width. I 

 put in an apparatus for cooking, a place for clean water and 

 a trough for feed. I started in with those four animals, and 

 I now have a herd of thirty-three. My system is somewhat 

 different from that of the other gentlemen who have spoken. 

 It is not exactly what it is in the West, nor exactly swill 

 feeding. As we are market gardeners to some extent, if we 

 have a crop which we cannot turn to advantage, we feed it 

 to the hogs. We give them ruta-bagas, flat turnips, pump- 

 kins, peas and meal, supplemented with skim-milk. At 

 different periods in the growth of the animal we use different 

 materials. For the first part of the growth, that is, from 

 four weeks on to three or four months, considerable of it is 

 milk, supplemented with melons, pumpkins and ruta-bagas ; 

 and, as they increase in age, we change it to a somewhat 

 more concentrated food. We now have seven ready for the 

 butcher. We have been feeding them since spring, and they 

 will dress two hundred pounds each. I think that a great 

 deal depends upon the selection of the animal, and the best 

 time for making the selection is when they are six or eight 

 weeks old. Then skim-milk, oats and barley make an excel- 

 lent food. I should prefer it to any other. 



Mr. Rawson. I find it necessary to wean my pigs when 

 they are about five or six weeks old. That is because the 

 young pigs then begin to eat swill, and if they eat swill and 

 nurse at the same time it does not always agree with them, 

 and therefore I like to wean them when they are about that 

 age ; but if you feed them upon shorts and milk you can 

 keep them with the sow much longer. 



Question. What kind of squash does Mr. Louis grow? 



