

APPENDIX. 503 



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bushel, and potatoes, 33 cents; al these prices my sales of pork have always 

 exceeded the expense of keeping, and given me a handsome profit, besides the 

 manure taken from mystics, which is of great value on my farm, usually not 

 less than five hundred" cart loads annually. 



"In some cases, my best pigs, upon four quarts of Indian meal, with an equal 

 quantity of potatoes, apples or pumpkins, well cooked, have been made to gain 

 tioo pounds a day. At this rate, it may be seen, there is a profit in fattening 

 pork at the above price of grain. 



"The older class of pigs for the first ten or twelve months, are kept princi- 

 pally upon brewers' grains, with a small quantity of Indian or barley meal, or 

 rice, ruta-baga, sugar-beet, &c., and in the season of clover, peas, oats, corn- 

 stalks, weeds, &c., they are cut green and thrown into the pens; the next four 

 or five months before killing, they have as much Indian meal, barley meal or 

 rice, with an equal quantity of potatoes, apples or pumpkins as they will eat, 

 the whole being well cooked and salted, and given to them about blood warm. 

 During the season of fattening, an ear or two of hard corn is every day given 

 to each pig. This small quantiiy they will digest well, and of course there is no 

 waste. Shelled corn soaked in water made as salt as the water of the ocean, for 

 forty-eight hours, with a quart of wood ashes added to each bushel, and given to 

 them occasionally in small quantities, greatly promotes their health and growth. 

 Their health and appetite is also greatly promoted by throwing a handful of 

 charcoal once or twice a week into each of their pens. Their principal food 

 should, however, be cooked as thoroughly and as nicely as if intended for table 

 use. From long practice and repeated experiments, I am convinced that two 

 dollars worth of material, well cooked, will make as much pork as three dollars 

 worth of the same material given in a raw state. 



"If intended for killing at the age of nine or ten months, they should be full 

 fed all the time and kept as fat as possible. If on the other hand they are in- 

 tended for killing at the age of fifteen or eighteen months, they should not be 

 full fed, nor be made very fat for the first ten or twelve months. 



"To satisfy myself of the benefit of this course, I took six of my best pigs 

 eight weeks old, all of the same litter, and shut them in two pens, three in 

 each. Three of these I fed very high and kept them as fat all the time as they 

 could be made. The other three were fed sparingly, upon coarse food, but kept 

 in a healthy, growing condition, till within four or five months of the time of 

 killing, when they were fed as high as the others. They were all slaughtered 

 at the same time, being then sixteen months old. At the acre of nine months, 

 the full fed pigs were much the heaviest, but at the time of killing, the pigs fed 

 sparingly, for the first ten or twelve months weighed, upon an average, fifty 

 pounds each more than the others. Besides this additional weight of pork, 

 the three "lean kine" added much more than the others to my manure heap. 

 These results would seem very obvious to any one who has noticed the habits 

 of the animal. In consequence of short feeding they were much more active 

 and industrious in the manufacture of compost, and this activity at the same 

 time caused the muscles to enlarge and the frame to spread, while the very fat 

 pigs became inactive, and like indolent bipeds, they neither worked for their 

 own benefit nor for that of others. 



"For the purpose of increasing my manure heap, my pens are kept con- 

 stantly supplied with peat or swamp mud, about three hundred loads ol which 

 are annually thrown into my styes. This, with the manure from my horse 

 stable, which is daily thrown in, and the weeds and coarse herbage which are 

 gathered from the farm, give me about five hundred cart loads of manure in a 





