398 REARING AND FEEDING OF ANIMALS. 



Above we have given a detailed statement of the best prac- 

 tice adopted abroad for the feeding and rearing of this most 

 important and valuable animal. The practice of feeding in this 

 country is more varied, and in some instances entirely different. 

 Maize, or Indian corn, has long been used as the principal food 

 for preparing swine for the market; the practice which for- 

 merly obtained, even among many of our most thrifty farmers, 

 was to let the animals run at large, uncared for and unattended, 

 until such times as they were to be taken up for fattening. In 

 many instances where the animals had the range of a forest, 

 and an abundance of nuts, they were generally in pretty good 

 condition, and required but a few weeks attentive feeding to 

 prepare them for the butcher; but to effect this, a much greater 

 amount of grain was used than was absolutely necessary, it 

 being almost universally fed out in an uncrushed and uncooked 

 state. 



Economy in the feeding of all kinds of farm stock has en- 

 grossed the attention of many gentlemen; it is a subject of vast 

 importance, not merely to the individuals immediately inter- 

 ested, but to the nation at large. From a vast variety of 

 experiments, made by different persons, in all parts of the 

 Union, and under almost every variety of circumstance, the 

 fact is established beyond all controversy, that so far as swine 

 are concerned, there is a saving of at least two-fifths of the 

 amount of the ordinary food requisite to fatten a hog, by 

 steaming or cooking it. That is, three bushels of grain, (corn, 

 for instance,) properly prepared by cooking, will go full as far 

 towards fattening a hog as five bushels in its raw and uncooked 

 state. 



The result of an experiment is found in the Annual Report 

 of the Agricultural Society of Maryland, instituted for the pur- 

 pose of determining the relative value of the two methods of 

 feeding. We subjoin the statement: it speaks for itself. 



On the first day of December four shoats of the same breed, nearly of a size, 

 and as much alike in every respect as could be selected from a herd of ninety 

 odd hogs, were made choice of; each carefully weighed, and placed in a single 

 st) r e where their food could be exactly regulated. They weighed between 81 

 pounds and 100. The two whose weights together made 185 pounds, were 

 led on one gallon of shelled Indian corn, weighing seven pounds to each, for 

 every 24 hours, and as much water as they wanted. This quantity of food 

 was sufficient for them; generally they about consumed it. Some five or six 

 different days between the 1st of December and 4th of January, the time the 

 experiment was going on, they did not eat their whole allowance. 



For the two shoats, whose weights together made 173 pounds, seven pounds 

 of good Indian corn meal, by measure ten pints, were made into good mush, 

 or hasty pudding, and divided between them for every twenty-four hours. 

 That is, these two had allowed them exactly half the weight of meal which 

 the others had of raw corn. The seven pounds of meal were daily mixed 

 with scalding water, and then well boiled; the whole process of cooking was 

 done on an average in Ij hours. They were all fed twice a day and at the 





