AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
335 
Breeding and Keeping Swine. 
The following article is returned by the Commit¬ 
tee to whom it was intrusted to decide upon the 
merits of the numerous articles received, as, on the 
whole, the most practical and universally applica¬ 
ble. The kind of swine which Mr. Henry describes 
is common in many parts of Pennsylvania and New- 
Jersey, and doubtless is the basis of the Chester 
County breed, which is now making an effort to be¬ 
come recognized as a regular breed. Whether it is 
really any better than any well-bred specimens of 
the Pennsylvania hog, we will not now discuss—but 
with so good a breed at hand, a farmer may be par¬ 
doned for knowing no more about the breed of his 
own hogs. We may with propriety here add that 
favorite breeds of swine with us, are the Windsor 
hogs, bred on Prince Albert’s farm in Windsor, and 
the Suffolk. The former are considered an im¬ 
provement on the latter, and both, with their 
■crosses, are admirable for young pork. We like the 
Chester County breed for a large one, very much, 
but for Eastern farmers, a small, quick-maturing 
breed for slaughter at 8 or 9 months old, is preferable, 
and most profitable, for hogs grow very little in the 
Winter, as a general rule, unless at a very consider¬ 
able expense in corn. Mr. Henry’s plan of feeding 
his pigs a little grain all the time, so as to keep 
them in good, rapidly-growing condition, is particu¬ 
larly commendable. Keeping swine on the “ root, 
hog or die ” principle until fattening time, and then 
crowding them by a surfeit of corn, is very poor 
policy, yet extensively practised. Not less com¬ 
mendable is the boiling the corn, instead of giving 
the miller one-sixteenth of it for grinding, and then 
cooking it after all. We have no doubt the boiling 
answers every purpose. A few hours soaking 
would save fuel as well as better prepare the corn 
for digestion. As to marketing—-how best to sell 
pork depends upon the market itself.— Ed. 
[PRIZE ARTICLE.] 
Rearing and Fattening Hogs. 
BY GATES HENRY, SCHUYLKILL CO., PA. 
The hog is well known all over the world, and is 
confined to no one part in particular. It belongs 
to the same class of animals as the elephant and 
rhinoceros, the thick-skinned, or Pacliydermata. 
The utility of the hog is in a great measure owing 
to its very remarkable fecundity, re-producing at 
one year old, and bearing from eight to ten young 
at a time (sometimes even more), and that twice a 
year. Some man-of-figures has estimated the pro¬ 
duct of a single sow, with only six young at a time, 
in ten generations, to be about 6,500,000. 
The hog was the animal which the Ancients sacri¬ 
ficed to the goddess of the harvest, Ceres. 
It has been estimated that there are raised, in the 
United States, yearly, about forty millions of hogs, 
which, at $7 per head, amount to the immense sum 
of two hundred and eighty millions of dollars; if, 
then, the hog could be so improved as to raise his 
value one dollar a head, an immense amount of 
money would accrue to the interest of the farmer. 
As you say in your prospectus that you wish a 
farmer’s experience with raising the hog,killing, cur¬ 
ing, etc., in preference to his acquired knowledge of 
■the brute, I will be candid enough to acknowledge 
that I do not know the breed of my own swine. 
They are only of moderate length, with broad, 
square shoulders and hams, short legs, and great 
depth, medium-sized heads and straight snouts. 
Hardly a day passes that we do not hear the remark, 
as dirty as a hog.” This, I consider, a vilification 
of the animal which Franklin’s colored servant said 
was the “ only gentleman in England,” from the 
fact that he was the only animal that did not work 
in that country; I believe that the filthy habits of 
the hog are in a very great measure owing to his 
domestication, for in this State he is cribbed up in 
a small pen, and is fed upon the offal of every thing— 
•upon the most disgusting food—and is considered 
■as much an instrument for converting filth into 
•compost, as a source of wholesome and palatable 
food. He has the propensity of wallowing in the 
mire common to all animals of his order, but gen¬ 
erally for the purpose of ridding himself of vermin, 
and of protecting his thinly covered skin from the 
attacks of insects. In this respect the hog is no 
more dirty than the elephant or the hippopotamus. 
No animal displays the changes arising from domes¬ 
tication more than the hog, which may be observed 
by contrasting the long-legged, wild and savage 
boar, with the short-shanked, docile, fat and plump 
Pennsylvania hog, which with difficulty walks rap¬ 
idly across the confines of his narrow pen. 
BREEDING AND REARING. 
In selecting my breeding hogs, I always pick out 
the best shaped, most thriving boar pig to keep over 
for a breeder. For a sow I select a healthy shoat, 
well shaped, but thin and lank, in preference to a 
fat and sleek one; my reasons for this are, that the 
lean sow will produce more pigs, and raise them 
better, than one in high order—the sleek one con¬ 
verts all her food into fat and flesh for her own sides 
and back, while in the lean one it is converted into 
food for the young. This rule is applicable to all 
animals. A cow which shows every rib when in 
milk, will bring forth larger and better calves, and 
give more and better milk, than the one which al¬ 
ways looks fat enough for the slaughter. My ex¬ 
perience fully sustains my theory. My mode of 
raising hogs which are intended to be kept over, is 
to have them pigged about the latter part of August 
or first of September, and after allowing them to 
run with the sow from four to six weeks, confine 
them in a separate pen, When first taken from the 
sow they should be fed from six to eight times a 
day, or else they will fall off in flesh, and it will take 
them weeks to recruit. Their usual allowance, at 
first, should be about a pint of milk to each pig, 
and in order to facilitate the properly attending to 
them, the milk barrel should be kept standing very 
near the pen, from which it can be dipped with a 
pail with very little trouble, being replenished night 
and morning with fresh skimmed milk from the 
dairy. The quantity for each pig should be gradu¬ 
ally increased each day according to the growth of 
the pigs, until they have attained to the age of three 
or four months, when a regular allowance should 
be made them; and the number of times feeding- 
may be diminished. At this time in the pig’s life 
a little grain fed night and morning, will not be 
thrown away on him; a little oats or rye if the pig 
is in a healthy condition, followed by about a pint 
of com, which may be subsequently increased to a 
quart. This addition of grain will tell amazingly 
in the growth of the animal, as well as have a ten¬ 
dency to keep him in such a condition, that when 
“fattening time” arrives he will be ready for the 
knife much sooner than a hog fed only on slops 
without the daily quota of corn, to say nothing of 
the saving of a good deal more corn than has been 
used up to this time in the feeding. The milk from 
the dairy, when weakened by the slops from the 
kitchen, should occasionally through the week be 
enriched by the addition of rye bran. 
STY AND BEDDING. 
There is no greater mistake made by farmers than 
allowing swine to run about out of the pen. To 
say nothing of the immense destruction which they 
are liable to do, they so completely run themselves 
down that it takes almost double the amount of 
feeding to get them in condition for butchering. 
The pen in which hogs are kept should consist 
of two apartments—a covered and an uncovered 
one. An excellent manner in which to construct 
a pig-sty, is to erect a two-story frame building, 
having a part of the under story boarded off for a 
place in which to keep the slop barrel, reserving 
the rest for a dry pen for the hogs, and have a pen 
constructed outside, and communicating with this 
covered one. The feeding trough should be in the 
outside pen. In this manner, if the pigs are given 
a sufficiency of rye straw in the inside pen, and the 
outside one is kept well supplied with the buts of 
corn stalks, they will not only make an immense 
amount of manure, but will keep themselves white 
and clean, thus refuting the assertion of the filthi¬ 
ness which is continually flung at them. In the 
upper part of this pen should be kept litter for the 
bedding for the hogs ; or a part of it may be parti¬ 
tioned off for a hennery. 
I have adopted what I consider a very good as 
well as economical plan of getting the upper part 
of my hog building filled with good littering mate¬ 
rial. It is this: When hauling in my corn fodder 
I cut off about two feet of the hard, dry buts, 
which the cattle can not eat, and have them bound 
into small bundles and stowed away in the upper 
portion of the hog-house, to be used as required. 
These corn buts when thrown into the outside pen 
are so tom and trampled up that they are converted 
into good, lasting manure, which has not its supe¬ 
rior on the farm, and which would be almost entire¬ 
ly lost if fed to 'the cattle in the fields, etc. 
FATTENING. 
When fattening time comes, I generally com¬ 
mence by feeding the “ nubbins,” and after two or 
three weeks, follow them up with shelled corn. 
This I always feed boiled, boiling in the morning 
what is required during the day, and at night what 
is necessary for the morning. Feeding thus, brings 
my work nearly all in daylight. In this way I can 
make my hogs fat enough for all practical purposes, 
by feeding them from fifteen to twenty bushels of 
corn, each, and in slaughtering at sixteen months 
old, they weigh from four to five hundred pounds. 
I never like them to exceed the latter figure in 
weight, for I have no fancy for this overgrown and 
spongy pork of forced hogs. 
HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
You will observe that I do not particularize any 
disease or its remedy—the reason is that I know 
nothing about disease in hogs. I have never had 
occasion to know—tailing care of my hogs, feed¬ 
ing them regularly and paying attention to their 
litter and quality of feed. In nine years’ experience 
in hog raising, I have had but one die—and that 
one I am constrained to think was bodily injured, 
as he became so weak in the hind-quarters that he 
was unable to support that portion of his body, 
and died while in very good condition, showing no 
symptoms of disease. 
KILLING AND CURING. 
As to the killing of hogs, I presume that almost 
every farmer in the land knows as much as I do; 
at least, every one should. The butchering is a 
small matter—the work of a day—and I do not 
deem it necessary to insert my mode here, as all 
have nearly the same way of accomplishing this end. 
The way in which to realize the most money out of 
the hog meat is to cut every available scrap into 
sausage meat, and boil the rest into scrapple (cur¬ 
ing only the hams), and selling it while fresh, and 
the sooner the better, as both sausage and scrapple 
command a higher price early in the winter than at 
any other season. 
The curing of pork is, perhaps, one of the most 
important matters in connection with the rearing 
of swine, and my mode I consider as one of the 
very best, from the fact that it never fails. 
After the meat (hams or shoulders) is thoroughly 
cold, cut and trim the hams very close, then rub 
them well with salt, pack close in a barrel or tub, 
and after laying for three or four days, make abrine 
of the following ingredients: To every 100 pounds 
of ham, allow 4 gallons of water, 9 pounds of salt, 
4 pounds of sugar, 4 ounces saltpeter, and 1 ounce 
saleratus. The brine should be boiled and the scum 
taken off; when cold pour it on the meat. From 
four to six weeks should be allowed, (according to 
size of hams), for the meat to remain in pickle. 
After the meat is hung up, allow two or three days 
to dry, then smoke with as little fire as possible. 
Usegreen hickory, with sassafras in small quantities. 
As soon as the meat is sufficiently smoked, each 
ham should be taken down and j carefully wrapped 
in paper, then bagged to prevent the depredations 
of flies, and hung in a cool dry place, out of the 
reach of rats and mice. 
The foregoing embraces only the knowledge, 
notings, and experience of a practical farmer, about 
the .hog. My object will be attained, if it shall 
prove to be of any benefit to any one. > ' 
