172 THE COMPLETE FARMER 



fuse meat, which does not cost much ; if easy to be procured 

 give them a plenty, and I will venture to say that they will 

 not eat their pigs.' 



Another, in the same volume, p. 305, observes, ' When the 

 period of yeaning is near I take the sow apart and give her 

 free access to a loarm bed-room of ample dimensions in my 

 barn, with a dry plank floor, where the shingled walls pre- 

 vent the entrance of cold, rain, or Avind, with just enough 

 straw to amuse her " moments of anxiety," but not enough to 

 allow a single pig to cover his head and lose his road to the 

 fountain of comfort.' A writer with the signature ' Berk- 

 shire,' in the same volume, p. 321, states as his opinion that the 

 evil is caused by confining the sow in a light pen from the 

 ground, and the want of a suitable supply of potatoes, turnips, 

 ruta baga, &c., in addition to their other food. ' Whaler,'' 

 in the same paper, p. 338, who has raised fine pigs on board 

 of a whale ship, at sea, without grass or roots, believed ani- 

 mal food the specific remedy for the unnatural inclination of 

 sows to devour their offspring. And ' A Subscriber' ' is san- 

 guine in the opinion that if sows are so placed as to be able 

 to come to the ground a few days before pigging, no disap- 

 pointment would ever happen in the loss of pigs. It is not 

 convenient to let them ramble at large ; a temporary pen up- 

 on ground is equally good.' 



Swine should not be kept in close and filthy pens. Though 

 they wallow in mire, their object is coolness, not nastiness, 

 and they thrive faster and enjoy better health w^hen allowed 

 clean and dry lodgings than when they are not thus accom- 

 modated. The late judge Peters, of Pennsylvania, in an 

 article entitled ' Notices for a Young Farmer,'' &;c., observed, 

 that ' there is no greater mistake than that of gorging swine, 

 when first penned for fattening. They should, on the contra- 

 ry, be moderately and frequently fed, so that they be kept 

 full, but do not loathe or reject their food, and in the end 

 contract fevers and dangerous maladies, originating in a hot 

 and corrupted mass of blood. In airy and roomy, yet mode- 

 rately warm pens, paved and boarded, and often cleaned, 

 they are healthy and thriving. They show a disposition to 

 be cleanly, however otherwise it is supposed, and always 

 leave their excrementitious matter in a part of the pen dis- 

 tinct from that in which they lie down. No animal will 

 thrive unless it be kept clean.' 



The same writer asserted in substance, that fatting hogs 

 should always be supplied with dry rotten wood, which 



