REPORT ON SWINE. 



According to the best considered experiments, it takes seven 

 pounds of Indian meal to make one pound of pork. At tliis rate, 

 when meal is worth $1.35| per 100 lbs., a pound of pork would cost 

 9i cents, and can be bought by the carcass for 7^ cents. 



•Nevertheless the exhibition of swine at the Hampshire Society's 

 Fair of 1884 was the best on the ground, comprising sixteen entries 

 for premiums, and 79 animals, and not an inferior pig among them. 

 The Agricultural college also sent a collection of Berkshires and 

 . Yorkshires, which were a credit to the farm and the Fair. This 

 apparent anomaly is explained by the fact that a large proportion of 

 the pork raised in New P^ngland is made out of much cheaper mate- 

 rial than Indian meal : and materials which it would be difficult to 

 utilize to as great advantage in any other way. The refuse of the 

 table, the dairy, the barn, the vegetable cellar, and orchard, suffice 

 to keep young pigs in good growing condition, and practical expe- 

 rience confirms the scientific doctrine that the excrement of fatten- 

 ing hogs is worth at the current prices of fertilizers, almost if not 

 quite as much as the grain from which it is made. 



Granting then that there is a satisfactory profit in keeping a lot of 

 swine in proportion to the size and resources of the farm, itisgratefy- 

 ing as well as instructive to see such an exhibition by practical farm- 

 ers of good judgment in the selection of animals for breeders, and 

 skillful kindness in furnishing to these creatures the conditions for 

 making their existence enjoyable by themselves, and profitable to 

 their owners and the community. 



Among the swine exhibited for premiums there were Berksliires and 

 Chester Whites and crosses of these breeds on one another, and 

 grades with common mixed stock. Some had pedigrees as long as 

 the moral law ; others had only their owners voucher to back up their 

 claims to recognition as thoroughbred. Manifestly they all belong 

 to the ''Swill pail breed;" and if they had ever squealed for their 

 feed it was a good while before Fair time. 



