Rearing and Fattening of Pigs. 



3 



It may be advisable to briefly discuss those particular points 

 in which the ordinary farm pig is deficient, and then to attempt 

 to discover one or more remedies. One of the great checks to 

 the improvement of pigs appears to be the enormous amount of 

 local prejudice as to the colour and type of pig. It is difficult 

 to obtain from those most staunch in the breeding of pigs of a 

 certain colour the slightest approach to a good and sufficient 

 reason for the fancy for that particular colour. The general 

 reply is that pigs of that colour always do best, but when 

 this assertion is closely examined no proof can be given of 

 its correctness, and it usually rests on the alleged fact that 

 their fathers had proved the truth of the assertion, or some- 

 thing of the kind, and that what was good enough for their 

 forbears is good enough for them. Here rests the chief, if not 

 the whole, cause for this persistence in a continuance of the 

 prejudice for or against pigs of particular colours. This fancy 

 is not confined to the producers or pig-breeders, but is greatly 

 shared by the consumers, who are, perhaps, influenced to a very 

 great extent by the local butchers, who naturally wish that their 

 customers should desire to purchase that particular kind of 

 article which can be most cheaply and most readily obtained in 

 the district. 



It would be simply a waste of time to attempt to convince 

 persons of this class that the pork from a carcase of a white pig 

 would be exactly similar to that from a black-skinned pig if both 

 were of the same type and character and fed alike. If you so 

 stated you would be met with a simple denial of its possibility ; 

 but if you proceeded to ask for a possible cause you would 

 fail to obtain the slightest indication of any. In some districts 

 in the West of England a white pig was, until late years, 

 completely boycotted— exactly why, no one appeared to be 

 able to state — and, so far as I have discovered, the chief cause 

 for this objection to a white-skinned pig has been the fact that 

 the carcase has not so nice an appearance after the hair has been 

 scorched or singed off as the black-skinned pig, the fashion being 

 to scorch off the hair by fire instead of, as in the midland and 

 northern counties, removing it by scalding. Again, it has been 

 stated that the chief reasons for the white pig's being preferred in 

 the latter counties is that its scalded carcase presents a nicer 



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