AUTHOR'S METHOD OF FEEDING 183 



as already noted. There are some cases, however, in 

 which feeds may be ground to good advantage for the 

 sake of having them ground. For instance, when corn 

 has become very dry and hard and cannot be easily mas- 

 ticated, it is made palatable when ground. Some seeds 

 are so small and at the same time so hard that the pig 

 cannot masticate them as well as he should. In such cases 

 it is decidedly beneficial to have them ground. In general 

 the small grains give better results when ground while 

 corn may under some conditions give equally good and 

 possibly better results when fed whole, according to a 

 number of conditions. 



SOAKING FEEDS. 



Many times grains are soaked rather than ground. This 

 is a less expensive process and in many instances may be 

 as good as grinding. The objections to it, however, are 

 that if the pig is not properly trained to masticate soaked 

 feeds thoroughly, he may swallow them as he would 

 swallow the feed if he were eating slop. That is, the 

 whole grains in a soaked form would be taken into the 

 stomach without being masticated. It can easily be seen 

 that in such a state the feed would not be as, thoroughly 

 digested and the results would not be as good as if the 

 grain were fed dry and masticated. 



If grains are to be soaked, they should be soaked suffi- 

 ciently long to make them soft. Care should be taken, 

 however, not to let the material sour. While sour feeds 

 in general are as good as sweet feeds, provided they are 

 not too sour, there is great danger in changing from one 

 to the other. If sour feeds are to be used, they should 

 always be sour, and if sweet feeds are to be used, they 

 should always be sweet. This is a point of considerable 



