220 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



very much interested and pleased with the lecture this 

 morning, as it conforms so universally to my experience in 

 a small way in keeping swine. I have been accustomed for 

 many years to keep a small number of breeding sows, and 

 sell the pigs, fattening those that 1 could not sell, and dis- 

 posing of them at about the weight of two hundred pounds. 



I want to say one word in regard to feeding. I too fre- 

 quently ses hogs wallowing in narrow pens in filth up to 

 their sides. I never believed that anybody could succeed in 

 making any money by keeping hogs in that way. It has 

 been said here this morning that the hogs of some of the 

 speakers were fed largely on swill. Most of us know that 

 a very small proportion of the farmers of the Common- 

 wealth are so fortunate as our chairman in having the great 

 city of Boston to feed his herd of swine. You and I, 

 brother farmers, have to feed our swine from the products of 

 our own farms ; and what I want to say here is that I have 

 always thought that the very cheapest food for swine, as well as 

 for dairy cows, is grass. Turn your hogs to grass just as 

 soon as you possibly can, and give them grass as a rule until 

 they reach the weight of a hundred pounds. My hogs this 

 last summer have been in a lot of between four and five 

 acres adjoining my orchard, and early in the season I took 

 down the fence and let my breeding swine go into the 

 orchard, and for quite a number of weeks they got their 

 entire living there, with a very little water carried to them 

 every day, and they were in a better condition, really, than 

 I would like to have them for breeding purposes. 



Now, one word in regard to breeds. I have found it for 

 my interest to buy sows of the larger breeds. While I 

 have bought my sire, a pure-bred Yorkshire, of our chair- 

 man, I do not care to buy my sows of him. I want to get 

 them from another source, because I want a larger sow. I 

 have been successful in getting litters of thirteen, fourteen 

 and fifteen to a sow. For the last year and a half I have 

 not succeeded in keeping a pig until it got up to a hundred 

 pounds in weight. My rule has been, when a pig would 

 weigh from fifty to a hundred pounds live weight, to ask 

 the same as the market price for dead weight. A day or 

 two ago I sold the last ones that I had, that averaged 



