WEANING. 169 



cise tend to prevent them from becoming rickety or crooked in the 

 legs. 



Butter-milk, whey, and the refuse of the dairy, with boiled or 

 steamed potatoes, pollard, and oat or barleymeal, may be given* as 

 food ; also boiled cabbage and lettuce, macerated and bruised oats, 

 barley, and even wheat ; in short, the most nutritious and succulent 

 food that circumstances will permit of, and a daily run at grass 

 wherever it is possible. At first their food should all be given to 

 them warm, and be tolerably soft, in order better to assimilate with 

 the state of the digestive functions ; gradually and soon they must 

 be accustomed to take it cold, it being far better for them so when 

 once they are used to it ; and they must also learn to masticate 

 their food. 



Newly-weaned pigs require five or six meals in the twenty-four 

 hours. In about ten days one may be omitted ; in another week, 

 a second ; and then they must do with three regular meals each 

 day. 



But let it be understood that, while we would enforce the neces- 

 sity of good and ample feeding, we highly deprecate all excess, and 

 all stimulating, heating diet, such tending to vitiate the animal 

 powers, often to lay the foundation of disease, and never to produce 

 good, sound, well-flavored flesh. 



A little sulphur mingled with the food, or a small quantity of 

 Epsom or Glauber's salts disolved in the water, will frequently 

 prove beneficial. 



A plentiful supply of clear cold water should always be within 

 their reach ; the food left in the trough after the animals have done 

 eating, should be removed, and the trough thoroughly rinsed out 

 before any more is put into it. Strict attention should be paid to 

 cleanliness ; indeed, many persons assert that there is no comparison 

 in point of thriving between an animal well cleaned and repeatedly 

 brushed and another that is left to itself; although both shall be in 

 feeding and all other respects treated exactly the same, the latter 

 will not weigh so much as the former by many pounds. 



This treatment will bring them on to the time when the owner 

 must separate those he intends for breeders from those which are to 

 be fattened for the market. The boars and sows should be kept 

 apart from the period of weaning. 



The question of which is most profitable to breed swine, or to 

 buy young pigs and fatten them will best be determined by the 

 individuals who have to study it, for they know best what resources 

 they can command, and what chance of profits each of these separate 

 branches offers. 



There was an interesting paper published some little time since 

 in the Farmer's Magazine, calculating the number of pigs which, in 

 the course of ten years, may be raised from two one year old sows, 

 8 



