282 LIVE-STOCK JUDGING 



the broken-down pasterns and cramped hocks are not 

 as common as in the much heavier bodied and lighter 

 boned lard hog. 



294. Quality. — General refinement is usually more 

 marked in hogs of bacon type, although their bone is 

 naturally heavier. Trimness of jowl and under line, fine 

 ears, light, smooth shoulders, tapering hindquarters and 

 gammons, with a fine, smooth coat of hair, are indica- 

 tive of the best texture of lean and even deposition of fat 

 so essential in high class bacon. 



295. Condition. — The determination or description of 

 condition in the bacon hog, as in the dairy cow, is a fine 

 point. He should not be fat as the lard hog, yet simply 

 being half fat does not constitute bacon condition. There 

 is in bacon hogs, as in all other fat stock, an optimum state 

 which constitutes ripeness, but it is quite different in 

 degree of fatness from what constitutes ripeness in lard 

 hogs, cattle and sheep. The condition sought in the 

 bacon hog is that in which there has been suflficient fat de- 

 posited to show the narrow margin along the back when 

 the carcass is split, and this fat is of the sort which gives 

 firmness to the side, being composed largely of the sohd 

 palmatin and stearin fats rather than the olein which 

 melts at ordinary temperatures. It should be interspersed 

 evenly with the lean. There is difficulty in holding this 

 condition after the hogs have attained 200 pounds 

 weight. 



296. Feeding hogs.— Hogs grown for the production 

 of bacon are marketed at such an early age that the 

 feeder type concerns the breeder more than any one else. 

 Pigs for this purpose should not only conform to the 

 correct type but they should have constitutional vigor as 

 indicated by a full, though not wide, chest, a bright eye 



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