188 THE HOG. 



this purpose. Soiling, or feeding pigs on cut green meat, has also its 

 advantages, and is very much practised wherever there are crops 

 and facilities for so doing. The best artificial grasses and green meat 

 for swine are clover, lucerne, chicory, sainfoin, vetches, tares, and 

 bean and pea-haulm. Some persons feed their swine on these matters 

 in the fields ; but it is a far better practice to turn them into yards or 

 small enclosures, and there have the green meat brought to them, as 

 by this means the animals are not able to wander about so much, 

 exhausting their strength, and feeding in a desultory manner, but are 

 kept quiet, and their dung more concentrated, especially if good 

 litter or earth is laid down to receive and absorb it. 



This feeding on greet: meat for awhile cools and purifies the blood, 

 and keeps the animals in fair store condition, though it tends but 

 very little to fatten them : where it is intended that it shall perform 

 that office as well, it must not be simply cut green from the field and 

 thrown to them, but chopped up small and salted, and mixed with the 

 screenings of corn, or pollard, or meal, or roots, and moistened with 

 some kind of wash and left to ferment. 



Clover, hay, or dried vetches may be also given to swine, chopped 

 up small, and in wash ; the former with undoubted advantage, for 

 clover and lucerne are allowed to be exceedingly nutritive to swine ; 

 but many persons consider vetches, whether green or dried, as 

 heating. 



ANIMAL SUBSTANCES. 



There cannot be a doubt but that these are highly fattening in their 

 nature, and also that swine, being somewhat allied to the carnivora, 

 will greedily devour them ; but the question is, Do they not tend to 

 make the flesh strong and rank, to inflame the blood, to create in the 

 animals a longing for more of such food, and thus lead them to 

 destroy fowls, rabbits, ducks, and even the litters of their compan- 

 ions ? Many will give blood, entrails, scraps of refuse meat, horse- 

 flesh, and such like, to swine, but we should decidedly discourage 

 such practices ; the nearest approach to animal food we would admit 

 should be pot-liquor, and dairy refuse. Animal food is bad for every 

 kind of swine ; and tends to make them savage and feverish, and 

 often lays the foundation of serious inflammation of the intestines. 



GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR FEEDING AND FATTENING. 



Regular hours of feeding rank among the first of the rules which 

 ought to be observed ; the pigs will soon learn to expect their meals 

 at certain times, and the stomach will be ready for it ; irregularity 

 will therefore irritate the digestive powers, and prevent so much 

 benefit being derived from the meal when it does come. 



