No. 4.] SWINE BREEDING AND FEEDING. 219 



Mr. Louis. I have found in all my experience that the 

 men who are complaining of the low price of pork are the 

 men who generally go into hogs when they are high, and 

 they have not fairly got into hogs when the market drops 

 again. You will see, in consequence of these two years of 

 low prices, that pork will rise next year or the year after to 

 a high figure ; and then these men who are weary and tired 

 of raising pork will not have any on hand when it goes up. 



Dr. Twitchell. Will you describe your breeding pens? 



Mr. Louis. My hog houses are seven by eleven. I wish 

 to say this about hog houses, as it seems there is greater 

 interest here in swine than I had any idea. I think a double 

 hog house, which is the way they are generally built here, 

 is a nuisance. At least, it would be in the West. Our 

 prevailing west winds and north winds in the winter season 

 make them very cold on one side. It is a matter of neces- 

 sity that the hog house should be double, unless the side 

 runs to the north or to the west. My floors in the hog 

 house are cemented. That is, my walls are a foot high, and 

 I put gravel inside the wall and fill it up. I lay a ten-inch 

 plank on the wall, and toe-nail my studding to it. Lumber 

 with us costs only eight or ten dollars a thousand, so the 

 cost of lumber would make a very great difference with you. 

 I lay my plank upon the wall, and then fill gravel inside the 

 wall and pound it down within an inch of the level of the 

 plank sills. Then I lay my joist in this gravel, level with 

 the sill again, fill this space with cement, and put an inch 

 board on the cement while it is green. This will make you 

 a floor that will last a great many years. Besides this, you 

 will never have any trouble with rats, which are a great 

 nuisance in a hog house ; and, if any disease should ever 

 occur in your herd, it will never penetrate beneath your 

 floors. 



Question. I would like to ask whether clover winter 

 kills in Wisconsin. We cannot be sure of it here. 



Mr. Louis. Yes, sir. Once in a while we will have a 

 winter-killed field. We had a field last winter that winter- 

 killed. We had no snow. But, as a rule, we get our clover 

 through all right. 



Mr. Elbridge Cushman (of Lakeville). I have been 



