Raising Hogs in Colorado. 15 
tangled in deep straw and are either crushed by the sow or die 
from exposure. Give the sow as little attention as possible while 
she is farrowing, unless she must have assistance. In severe 
weather place the pigs as fast as they come in a basket in which a 
blanket is laid over a warm stone. Keep them well covered, and 
after all are born and have become warm and dry, take them to 
their mother and place each one at a teat. Then cover the mother 
and pigs. During the first forty-eight hours watch carefully, and 
if a pig strays from its mother, put it back against her body where 
it will be warm. 
Give the sow all the water she wants for the first twenty-four 
hours after the pigs are born, but no grain. Take the chill off 
the water in cold weather. For three or four days after the first 
twenty-four hours, give plenty of water, but feed grain and milk 
sparingly. Then slowly increase until, when the pigs are three 
weeks old, the sow is having all the feed she will consume. Give 
the pigs exercise and sunshine from birth, but do not allow them 
to get damp nor to be exposed to the wind. 
When the sow is given a warm, rich slop, or other milk-pro¬ 
ducing feeds just after her pigs are born, a strong milk flow is 
forced. The new-born pigs get too much and have diarrhoea, 
which often kills them. They cannot take all the milk, and the 
sow’s udder becomes inflamed and caked. When the pigs suckle, 
the pain becomes so intense that in desperation she jumps up, kills, 
and eats them. 
Overfeeding and lack of exercise cause the thumps in young 
pigs, but usually in Colorado, when pigs are thought to have the 
thumps, they actually have pneumonia, due either to damp beds 
or exposure to draughts. 
Good sows improve for several years in the number and size 
of the pigs they have at a litter. The U. S. Department of Agri¬ 
culture compiled the records of over six thousand sows and found 
yearling sows averaged 6.65 pigs per litter, and five-year-old sows 
averaged 8.4 pigs per litter. At the Wisconsin Experiment Sta¬ 
tion year-old sows averaged 7.8 pigs per litter, with an average 
weight per litter of 14.2 pounds, while sows from four to five 
years old averaged 9 pigs per litter with an average weight per 
litter of 26 pounds. The common practice of farmers selling their 
old brood sows each year and reserving immature ones for breed¬ 
ing is a bad practice, as the older sows are much better mothers and 
their pigs have a strong advantage in greater vitality at the start. 
The beginner had better arrange to have the pigs born in 
May, when the sows can be turned on pasture soon after farrow¬ 
ing. Most experienced Colorado hog raisers do not want pigs 
