91 



SWINE. 



[The following report of the Committee on Swine was not 

 received in season for insertion in its proper place.] 



The question whether the raising of pork in Massachusetts 

 can be made profitable, has its ayes and its noes ; and your 

 Committee will be found among the former ; that is, we believe 

 it to be so, in a majority of any given number of years, if the 

 farmer will bring into requisition the skill and judgment 

 which is necessary to make any other branch of his business 

 profitable. 



Every farmer, in our opinion, should raise pork sufficient for 

 his own family use, and some more ; for, as we said before, in 

 a majority of years, he will find it a paying business. 



He should be uniform in the amount of stock he keeps, not 

 because he has one year made twenty dollars by fattening two 

 hogs, the next year keep twenty, expecting by them to make 

 two hundred ; neither because this year he has made a loss in 

 fattening his pork, clean all out, determined to keep no more 

 hogs imtil com is cheaper or pork brings a better price ; for 

 when that change comes, he must make a fresh start upon the 

 very top of the market. He must pay ten dollars for a long- 

 nosed Western shoat, weighing one hundred pounds ; or, if he 

 cannot make up his mind to pay ten dollars for a good case of 

 hog cholera, he must pay five dollars or more for a six weeks 

 old pig weighing thirty poimds. 



Farmers, too, should more generally breed their pigs, as well 

 as fatten them ; for we believe that quite as much money is 

 made by the former as by the latter. The present year's 

 prices afford proof of that fact ; good pigs in the spring, at 

 five weeks old, sold readily at five dollars ; and now in the fall 

 that we are having to sell our pork at six and seven cent^, 

 (paying very little or no profit for fattening,) we find that those 

 who have attended to both have made it a fair business. 



A\liile your Committee would not express a very decided 



