178 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Whatever method is adopted, he must feed so as to keep them 

 growing and fattening all the time. A daily gain should be the 

 fixed rule. Too commonly, if any stock is neglected, it is the 

 young, growing animals ; and the fattening stock is pushed. 

 Push them all as fast as health will permit. An animal fed 

 high from first to last will consume less in total amount than if 

 stinted in his pighood. 



And in no one point, perhaps, is the value of the improved 

 breeds of swine seen more distinctly than in the economy of 

 feeding for growth. The small bone, the compact form, the 

 quiet disposition, the tendency to take on fat, are all material 

 items in the cost of raising. Which breed is best, your Com- 

 mittee are not called upon to decide. 



Another practical question is. Is cooked or uncooked food best 

 for fattening swine ? Science, both chemical and physiological, 

 settles this question in favor of cooked food. Some years since 

 the details of an experiment made by a careful and reliable 

 farmer, and published in the State Agricultural Report, seemed 

 to settle the question in favor of raw food. "The meal used 

 was composed of one-half corn, one-fourth oats, one-fourth 

 broom-seed. In cooking, the meal was boiled thirty minutes. 

 The pigs selected were all doing well upon uncooked food. I 

 put four in two pens, side by side, and weighed them four 

 different times. I fed two of them with cooked meal four weeks, 

 and they weighed less by eleven pounds than when I commenced. 

 They ate four bushels of meal. I fed eight and one-fourth 

 bushels of meal, uncooked, to the others, and they gained eighty- 

 two pounds. I then fed the last named pigs three and one-half 

 bushels of cooked meal, and in three weeks they lost four 

 pounds. I fed five and one-half bushels of raw meal to those 

 first fed on cooked food, and in three weeks they gained sixty- 

 one pounds. I think this proves conclusively that we cannot 

 fatten swine with profit on cooked food." 



Before accepting this as conclusive in favor of raw food, it 

 should be considered that it lacks the essential elements of a fair 

 trial. First, because any sudden change of diet with fattening 

 hogs is injurious. The stomach and absorbents seem to adapt 

 themselves to a given habitual food, and a sudden change, even 

 from a poorer to a more nutritious diet, is evil in its first effects. 

 If it does not impair the appetite, it arrests the fattening process. 



