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DOMESTIC AHIMAL8. 
necessary than when operations are carried on on the most extensive 
scale. Both the floor of the hut and that of the little court should be 
paved, and should incline outward ; along the lowest side should be a 
drain, with a sufficient declination, and so contrived as to communicate 
with your dung-tank. The farther the manure-heap, or tank, from the 
dwelling, the better : vegetable matter, in progress of decomposition, 
gives rise to pestilential vapors, or miasmata. 
When the weather is fine, a few hours’ liberty will serve the health 
and the condition of your hog, and a little grazing would be all the 
better. Should you be desirous of breeding, and keep a sow for that 
purpose, you must, if you have a second hog, provide a second sty, for 
the sow will require a separate apartment when heavy in pig, and when 
giving suck. This may be easily effected by building it against that 
which you have already erected, thus saving the trouble of raising 
more walls than are absolutely necessary ; and it need not have a court 
attached to it, should it be inconvenient for you to have one, as the best 
accommodation can be given up to the breeding sow, and your pigs will 
do well enough with a single apartment, if not too confined, and it have 
sufficient ventilation ; and if you permit them the advantage of taking 
air for a few hours daily. The extensive feeder should have a boiler of 
large size, properly fitted up, and an apparatus for steaming, as some 
vegetables are cooked in this mode more advantageously than by boiling. 
The poor man can use a pot as a substitute for a boiler, remembering in 
every case to clean it before using. Food should be presented to swine 
in a warm state — neither too hot nor too cold. 
A sty should be about seven or eight feet square, and the court about 
ten feet. The second sty need not be more than six feet square, and 
does not absolutely require a court. 
Breeding, Rearing, and Feeding. — In the selection of a boar and sow for 
breeding, much more attention and consideration are necessary than 
people generally imagine. It is as easy, with a very little judgment and 
management, to procure a good as an inferior breed ; and the former is 
infinitely more remunerative, in proportion to outlay, than the latter can 
possibly ever be. In selecting the parents of your future stock, you must 
bear in mind the precise objects you may have in view, whether the 
rearing for pork, or bacon ; and whether you desire to meet the earliest 
market, and thus realize a certain profit, with the least possible outlay 
of money, or loss of time ; or whether you mean to be contented to await 
a heavier although somewhat protracted return. If bacon, and the late 
market be your object, you will do well to select the large and heavy 
varieties, taking care that the breed has the character of being possessed 
of those qualities most likely to insure a heavy return, viz. : growth and 
facility of taking fat, relatively possessed by each. To that description 
we refer the reader. If his object be to produce poidc, he will find his 
account in the smaller varieties ; such as arrive with greatest rapidity at 
maturity, and which are likely to produce the most delicate flesh. In 
producing pork, it is not desirable that it should be too fat, without a 
corresponding proportion of lean ; and on this account, rather take a 
cross-bred sow than a pure Chinese stock, from which the over-fattening 
results might most naturally be apprehended. The Berkshire, crossed 
