138 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



We should not only feed at regular hours, but should give the 

 pigs no more than they will eat up clean, being careful, at the 

 same time, to give all they will eat. This is an easy thing to 

 do on paper, but very difficult in practice. 



Provided a pig can digest and assimilate an extra pound of 

 corn-meal a day, if we can induce him to eat it, he ought to 

 gain an extra half pound of pork. It is here that cooking 

 food can be employed to great advantage. But I think we do 

 not always get full benefit from cooking food, because we do 

 not feed young pigs often enough. Good corn or oat meal 

 gruel is "very filling," but it does not last long. It is more 

 easily digested than uncooked grain, and the stomach should 

 be more frequently replenished. 



There are hogs which can eat and possibly digest more 

 food than they can assimilate. For such hogs we do not need 

 to cook grain. If a farmer has such a race of hogs, he should 

 select out some of his best sows and cross them with a fine- 

 boned, quiet, thoroughbred boar. He would stand a good 

 chance of getting in the offspring the appetite and digestive 

 powers of the sow united with the quietness of disposition, 

 the fineness of bone and smallness of offal of the boar, and 

 more or less of his powers of assimilation. If such is the 

 case, he would have pigs that would eat more food and gain 

 more rapidly, in proportion to the food consumed, than the 

 thoroughbreds. I think there is money to be made in raising 

 and fattening such pigs, even without taking the value of the 

 manure into consideration. 



But I should by no means overlook this item : all good 

 farmers need manure, and the better they farm the more 

 manure they need. Now, I do not say that pigs will make 

 more or better manure than any other animal. In one sense 

 there is no difference. The value of the manure depends on 

 the food consumed. You cannot get more nitrogen, phos- 

 phoric acid and potash out of a ton of corn than it contains, 

 whether you feed it to hens, pigs, sheep or cows. You may 

 get a little less when fed to milch-cows or growing sheep than 

 when fed to pigs or chickens, but the difference is so slight as 

 not to be worth taking into the account. 



The question is often asked, "Can we buy artificial manures 

 as cheaply as we can make manure on the farm?" For my 



