GENERAL MANAGEMENT OF THE HOG. 205 



should be separate styes for breeding sows, for porkers, and fatten- 

 ing hogs. Not more than three or four of the latter should be in 

 one sty. The food should be given in troughs, in a separate com- 

 partment from that in which the hogs lie down, and no litter should 

 be allowed there. The floor should be of brick. or stone; should 

 be frequently washed clean, and the troughs should be cleaned out 

 before every meal. Any of the food left from the last meal should 

 be taken out and given to the store pigs. A very convenient con- 

 trivance for keeping the troughs clean is to have a flap or door made 

 with hinges, so that it can swing, and alternately be fastened by a 

 bolt to the inside or outside edge of the trough. When the hogs 

 have fed sufficiently, the door is swung in, and the trough easily 

 cleaned out. It remains on the inside till feeding time, when the 

 food is poured in without any impediment from the greedy hogs, 

 who cannot get at it till the door is swung out. This simple con- 

 trivance saves a great deal of trouble, and is easily adapted to 

 any common sty. It is a great advantage to be able to inspect 

 the styes without going into them ; and this is effected by placing 

 them under a common roof, which may conveniently be a lean-to to 

 the boiling-house or any other building, with a passage between 

 them. 



" Where numerous pigs are kept, it will be advantageous to have 

 a double row of styes, with a paved alley between them ; there 

 should be good drainage, by which all refuse is carried off to ft 

 manure-pit, and the greatest cleanliness should be maintained. Six 

 breeding sows, giving each two litters per annum, will produce 

 yearly upwards of a hundred pigs ; of these, fifty or sixty may be 

 fattened at the latter part of autumn, through the winter, and during 

 the months of February and March, for bacon ; the younger brood 

 may be killed as porkers, or sold off as stores. With respect to 

 the steaming apparatus, it will be found available for other animals 

 on the farm, as horses, &c., to which steamed potatoes and other 

 roots may be profitably allowed. 



" The breeding sows should be kept each by itself in a large and 

 commodious sty, and the store and fattening pigs should have their 

 respective tenements. Some recommend that the floor of the sleep- 

 ing-shed be made of planks, as bricks are cold and apt to induce 

 cramp or diarrhoea; certainly wood is preferable to bricks. Where 

 bricks are used, they should be set in cement, in order that no 

 filtration may take place through the interstices, and thereby keep 

 the soil underneath in a state of wetness, whence noxious gases 

 will necessarily arise and generate disease, to the great loss of the 

 farmer. Another thing is desirable, namely, that the roof of the 

 sty, whether composed of slates, tiles, or slabs of stone, should have 

 a gutter in order to carry off the rain ; this may be easily contrived, 

 and at little expense, and will often keep the sty from being flooded," 

 -MARTIN. 



