THE GENESEE FAJBMEE. 2T5 



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Ohio and Indiana in producing fat hogs, because they neglect to improve their lands 

 with a view to have them equal to the best on the Scioto and Wabash rivers. To 

 make millions of fat hogs on lean land as cheaply as it may be done on fat land, is an 

 impossibility. But if the farmers in the Atlantic States will first fatten their land, it 

 may be continued so as easily as any land at the West. One great advantage of pork- 

 making is, the facilities it afibrds for the improvement of one's farm ; for all the crops 

 being consumed on the land, it regains not only the mineral elements of said crops 

 drawn from the soil, but a considerable share of the organic elements taken from the 

 atmosphere. It is impossible to rear and fatten hogs and not make a good deal of rich 

 and valuable manure ; but it is easy to allow manure to be dropped in the woods, or in 

 low swampy grounds, where it is not needed, and where hogs are allowed to run. The 

 art of rearing hogs at the greatest profit includes the husbanding of all the dung and 

 urine produced by them in the best possible manner. In this way alone can one econo- 

 mically fatten his corn and clover fields as well as his hogs. Let them have both 

 shelter and water in the lots where they feed, or are fed. While young they need a 

 reasonable amount of exercise to develop muscle and bone, and for their health. In a 

 state of nature in forests, swine take considerable exercise in searching for their daily 

 food ; and in this way they acquire great strength of limb and muscle, and remarkable 

 constitutional powers of endurance. Many families of swine are injured by too high 

 feeding when young ; and this remark will apply to shoats, hoi'n cattle, and some of 

 the larger mutton sheep, as kept in England. Excessive fatness is so unnatural a condi- 

 tion as to amount to a positive disease ; and if long continued from birth till death in 

 a family, its constitutional powers will gradually fail, and the race become extinct. 



There is a golden mein in this matter, which the stock-grower will do well to study 

 and follow. If allowed to range in a good clover, pea, or oat field, growing hogs will 

 take just the exercise that is best for them, and salt as well as water should be provided, 

 adding a little sulphur and ashes. When put up to complete the fattening process, if 

 one can not conveniently grind as well as cook the grain consumed, it should, at least, 

 be boiled in large kettles. This is not an expensive operation, and cooking, by rendering 

 the starch in corn or other feed soluble, like gum, materially increases the nutritive value 

 of all grain and tubers fed to swine. This does not impair the quality of the manure, 

 while it augments the yield of fat in the animal. Hogs should be kept reasonably 

 warm, dry, and be regularly fed. As a matter of profit, care should be taken not to 

 feed too long before selling or killing them. On the other hand, one may not feed long 

 enough to attain the maximum profit. As in other departments of husbandry, experi- 

 ence and observation can alone make one skillful in the breeding, rearing, and fattening 

 of swine. 



The Castor Bean. — We find in the Tropical Farmer, published at Oceol% Florida, 

 the subjoined letter on the culture of the Pahna Christi, or Castor Bean, and the mode 

 of expressing the oil. It was written by a gentleman of Perry county, Ala., to his 

 friend at Tampa Bay : 



You wish to get information as to the manner of raising the Castor Bean, and the yield in seed 

 and oil to the acre, and the kind of press used for extracting the oil. I will endeavor to answer 

 your queries as you have put them down, though as far na I have been engaged in it, I have lost 

 money owing altogether to the difficulty of raising the seed in this climate. I have found in two 

 years past that the crop promised to do well until the middle of June, at which time a drouth set 

 in which cut off the crop. I have not been able to raise more than five bushels of seed to the acre. 

 If a man could be sure of twenty or twenty-five bushels to the acre, and was prepared to manufac- 

 ture the oil, it would be a good business. From the statements you make about its growth in your 

 county, I should think good land ought to bring twenty-five to thirty bushels per acre, (46 pounds 

 of seed is considered a bushel of Castor Beans, though mine did not weigh but 38 to 39 pounds to the 

 bushel ;) 46 pounds of seed ought to make two gallons of oiL I have cultivated two kinds, the 

 large red and a green kind that pop out of the hull by laying them on a clean yard in the sun. I 



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