BOOK VII. IX. 9-13 



penned together in a crowd and pell-mell, lie one on top 

 of another and abortions are thus caused. Therefore, 10 

 as I have said, sties should be built joined by party walls 

 each to the other and fourfeet inheight,so that the sow 

 may not be able to j ump over the these barriei s. They 

 ought not to be roofed over, so that the man in 

 charge may be able to look in from above and count 

 the number of piglings, and that if any mother is lying 

 on top of its litter and squeezes one of them, he 

 may extract it from under her. The swineherd 

 must be watchful, energetic, painstaking and active : 

 he ought to be able to remember all the sows under 

 his charge, both those which have produced offspring 

 and the younger sows, so that he may identify the 

 offspring of each separately. He must be on the 

 watch for sows which are farrowing and shut them 

 up, so that they may produce their litter in a sty; 11 

 he must then take note immediately of the number 

 and quality of the piglings which are born and take 

 special care that none of them is brought up by a sow 

 which is not its mother ; for the sucking-pigs, if they 

 have escaped from the sty, very easily become mixed 

 up, and the sow, when it lies down, offers its dugs as 

 freely to the offspring of other sows as to her own. 

 Thus the most important duty of the swine breeder is 12 

 to keep each sow shut up with its own litter. If he has 

 not a good memory and so cannot recognize the off- 

 spring of each sow, he should put the same mark on 

 the sow and its piglings with liquid pitch, so that he 

 may distinguish the different litters and their mothers 

 by means of letters or some other device ; for where 

 a large number is involved, it is necessary to employ 

 distinctive marks, so that the swineherd's memory 

 may not be confused. Since, however, it seems a 13 



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