214 : 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[June, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 78. 
There seems to have been an unusual amount 
of fatality among pigs this spring, and I do not 
wonder at it. One of my neighbors says he had 
seventeen pigs from two sows. He was busy 
and did not pay much attention to them, and 
the first thing he knew the sows had eaten up 
every one of them. “ Did you see her eat them ?” 
I asked. “ No,” he replied, “ they were under 
the barn and one day I thought I would go in 
and see how they were getting along, and they 
were all gone.” The pigs probably died from 
neglect, and then the sow, having no other way 
to “ bury her dead,” ate them up to get them 
out of her sight. Another neighbor says his 
sow ate up a litter of a dozen. I have no doubt 
that sows sometimes eat their own live pigs, 
but where one pig is lost in this way a hundred 
die from neglect, or from disease inherited from 
parents that have been weakened by bad treat¬ 
ment. The latter cause is often overlooked. 
A farmer in Ohio writes to the American Agri¬ 
culturist that he “ Had a nice litter of fourteen 
pigs this spring; the sow in good condition and 
well kept. When a week old the pigs were 
taken sick and eleven of them died. The pigs 
all over the neighborhood are dying in the same 
way. They drop down, lie still, breathe very 
hard, become cold, and in an hour or two, or 
at longest one day from the time they were at¬ 
tacked, die without a struggle.” It is probable 
that this is some hereditary disease derived di¬ 
rectly or remotely from a defective male animal 
kept in the neighborhood. For my part I am 
not sorry that “Hog Cholera” and other fatal 
diseases are on the increase. They are neces¬ 
sary to convince us that dirty water, decaying 
food, filthy pens, and general neglect in breed¬ 
ing and management are not conducive to the 
health of pigs. I verily believe that there are 
people who think that bad treatment is good 
for a breeding sow—that it makes her hardier 
and healthier! 
Feed liberally, work steadily, and clean thor¬ 
oughly, is my motto in the management of 
horses. My great trouble is to get the horses 
rubbed dry and clean before leaving them for 
the night. Where horses are worked six days 
in the week, thorough grooming is absolutely 
essential to their health. The more highly they 
are fed the more important it is to clean them. 
Most men use the curry-comb too much, and the 
whisk and the brush too little. I do not myself 
insist upon it, but I believe it would pay always 
to take the whole harness from the horses when 
put in the stables at noon, and rub them dry, 
washing the shoulders with cold water and af¬ 
terwards thoroughly drying them with a cloth. 
Bvery man and team on the farm costs me at 
least $750 a year ; and I question if one farmer 
in a hundred duly appreciates how much he 
loses from having poor horses, and in not keep¬ 
ing them in vigorous health, and in condition 
to do a maximum day’s work. Do not many 
of us from having inefficient horses, poor plows, 
dull harrows, rusty cultivators, shaky wagons, 
and other imperfect implements and machines, 
lose from one-third to one-half the whole cost 
of man and team ? And besides this, do we es¬ 
timate how much we lose by getting behind 
with our work from these and similar causes ? 
I had an old mowing machine that I got with 
the farm that “ for the sake of saving it ” I used 
for two years. Directly and indirectly I have 
no doubt that machine cost me $1,000! It cut 
just as well as a Wood’s or a Buckeye, but it 
was a one-wlieel machine with a wooden cutter- 
bar. We split the bar and had to repair it; 
then we broke the knife and had to take it to 
the blacksmith shop to have it welded. He 
“ burnt ” it and it broke again. Then I sent to 
New York for a new knife. This cut off the 
finger of the only man who knew how to oper¬ 
ate the machine and laid him up for several 
days. The consequence was, we did not get 
through haying until after wheat harvest. And 
you can imagine what kind of hay I had to 
feed out the next winter. Now I have two new 
mowers that a man cannot break if he tries; and 
in looking back I can hardly believe that I was 
ever so foolish as to waste time in tinkering 
an old worthless machine. 
Where one has smooth land that can be mown 
with a machine, it is a great mistake to turn 
working horses out to pasture in summer. 
There can be no question that land will produce 
more food when the grass or clover is allowed 
to grow until it is in flower, than if constantly 
cropped down as it grows. Witiia good mow¬ 
er, tedder, rake, and unloading fork, the ex¬ 
pense of getting the hay into the barn, if it is a 
good crop, need not exceed two dollars a ton. 
In the summer let the hay be cut into chaff and 
soaked in water for twelve or twenty-four hours, 
and the horses will eat it almost as readily as 
they will fresh grass. With the proper boxes 
for soaking it the labor is very slight. I used 
to chaff my hay with a horse-machine, cutting 
up enough at a time to last for several weeks; 
but I question if it is not better, after all, to cut 
it every day by hand as it is wanted. One of 
Gale’s Copper-strip machines will cut in two 
or three minutes all the hay a team will eat at 
a meal; and if the knives are sharp, it is mere 
child’s play to turn it. The object of soaking 
the hay chaff instead of merely moistening it in 
the ordinary way, is to soften it and allow it to 
absorb water—just as we soak dried apples be¬ 
fore cooking them. Of course, we must not 
use more water than the hay will absorb, as in 
such a case it would wash out the sugar and 
other soluble nutritive matter from the hay. It 
is true that if the water is used for soaking the 
next feed of hay, the sugar would not be lost, 
provided it does not ferment. A little experi¬ 
ence will enable any one to regulate the matter. 
Horses so fed, with a little grain, will fill their 
stomachs sooner and have more time to rest, 
and will be able to do more work than if turned 
out into a pasture—and in the morning you 
know where to find them and can eat your 
breakfast with dry feet. But the horses must 
be well groomed, especially at night, and the 
stables properly ventilated and kept clean and 
sweet. No food should be left in the manger. 
If it is not eaten up clean it should be removed 
before the horses are taken from the stable. I 
would give them what hay they would cat in 
the rack, but none to waste. I have a span of 
horses that will pull out from the rack, and waste, 
more hay than they eat, if allowed an unlimited 
supply. They should have a little hay in the 
rack to eat when they first come in from work, 
and after the harness is removed and they are 
rubbed down a little and are cooled off, give 
each horse a peck or so of cut feed. When he 
has eaten this let him be watered, and then give 
more cut feed. The practice of watering the 
horses at the pump or pond, as they are brought 
from the field, is not to be commended. A care¬ 
ful farmer may do it with impunity, because he 
would not allow them to drink too much when 
they are hot or tired, but many a good horse 
has died from careless watering, 
If horses are worked steadily from 7 A. M. 
until 11.30, and then from 1.30 to 0 P. M.—say 
9 hours, they will accomplish more than if they 
were kept longer in the field and rested every 
few bouts. When I hear the horn blow about 
5 o’clock in the afternoon and see great, stout 
young fellows leisurely walking to the house to 
eat their cookies, leaving their teams tied to the 
fence, or with their heads hanging down in the 
furrow, I think this may be a good country for 
men but a hard one for horses. Because ahorse 
cannot grumble and a man can, is no reason 
why the horse that does the hard work should 
not eat as often as the man who drives. By 
keeping on until 7 o’clock instead of 6 o’clock, 
and spending half an hour at lunch, the horses 
are kept out an hour longer in order to do half 
an hour’s work. Would it not be better to keep 
right along until 6 o’clock, and thus let the 
horses have an hour’s more time in the stable to 
eat before lying down to rest for the night? 
There would then be plenty of time to clean the 
horses, and attend to many little things that are 
now neglected. And, from the horses being in 
better condition, more work would be accom¬ 
plished. In haying and harvesting, of course, 
we must often work as long as we can see, and 
the men, and horses too, should have lunch. 
But in plowing, harrowing, cultivating, and oth¬ 
er ordinary farm work, there is no advantage 
in keeping the horses out so late, except oc¬ 
casionally in getting in the seed, etc., and when 
such is the case the horses need lunch just as 
much as the man who drives them. 
Let the boys, when at work in the field, have 
lunch, morning and afternoon. They need it. 
When I was a boy, I went to plow at C o’clock, 
which was my father’s rule, and I can recollect 
how terribly hungry I got by 9 o’clock, and how 
good a little bread and cheese and beer tasted 
about half-past nine or ten. 
All young, growing animals, other things 
being equal, need more food and at shorter in¬ 
tervals than animals that have attained their 
growth. And the great secret of success, in 
raising improved breeds of stock, is to furnish 
the young animals all the food they can digest 
and assimilate. As long as they are growing 
rapidly there is little danger of their getting too 
fat. The popular notion that we cannot keep 
Colswold, Leicester, or Southdown sheep in 
large flocks arises from the fact that when so 
kept the young sheep and lambs do not get the 
extra food and attention that they require. I 
have a flock of over ninety thorough-bred Cots- 
wolds and about two hundred and fifty Merinos. 
And I am satisfied that with the Cotswolds a 
given weight of mutton can be kept in a smaller 
space than with the Merinos. A neighbor said 
of the Cotswolds: “ You cannot keep so many. 
You ought not to have more than a dozen or 
so. These sheep are not like Merinos. You 
cannot keep them in large flocks. So and so 
tried it and the sheep pined away.” Now all 
this is sheer and unadulterated nonsense. I 
happened to know the h story of the flock he 
alluded to. Many of them were imported sheep 
brought over at different times by an English 
farmer who gave them good care and plenty of 
food, and they did remarkably well, although i 
they had no “roots”—only good pasture in 
summer and plenty of good clover hay in win¬ 
ter. But by and by the farm and the stock 
passed into the hands of some young men who 
did not work the land as well, nor give the sheep 
the requisite attention, and both form and flock 
run down rapidly. My father used to keep a 
largo flock of Southdown and Leicester sheep* 
