1 Ocr., 1902.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 233 
For the subdivisions you will require— 
36 rails, split. 
120 palings for the gangway. 
100 slabs for raised sleeping places. 
16 wooden troughs which you may make of hollow logs or of 
sawn. timber. 
The cost OF THE MATERIAL is small. The thirty-six posts can be cut and 
carted in your spare time, so we will not count them. 
£ 8s. ad. 
76 rails ae 4, xo we Ul ® 
200 slabs soe oe a x, 1k) 
220 palings 010 0 
1,000 shingles iO © 
Total _ cn on adn © 
The troughs you make yourself, so only the labour need count as in the case 
of the posts. Indeed, if you do all the work yourself, which every farmer 
should be able to do, the whole cost will be under £5, and your pigs will be 
comfortably housed. The raised sleeping place is absolutely necessary to 
cleanliness and comfort. 
Now, lastly, as to Feepine. We will take the brood sow. You can feed 
u compact brood sow till she is as pretty as a picture. Plenty of rich food will do 
that, because it will develop her fat, but fat anda high degree of fruitfulness 
or fecundity do not go together. Therefore avoid giving in excess all foods 
tending to produce fat. Do not stint the food, but let all foods be flesh-formers. 
Starchy food should be used very sparingly. The best classes of food for pig- 
feeding are cooked potatoes, milk, barley-meal, oatmeal, crushed oats, pollard, 
bran, and ground wheat. Barley-mealneed only be scalded —not cooked. Let 
the brood sows have plenty of exercise and provide a grass run for them. 
Skim milk, if sour, should not be fed to them. In fact, skim milk alone is not 
_a profitable food for any pig, as it takes from 20]b. to 40 lb. of the milk to form 
1 Ib. of flesh. Peanuts are a capital muscle-forming food for growing animals 
—not for those which are intended for immediate killing. Lucerne, peas, 
rape, &c., are beneficial to the brood sow. 
Hor the production of bacon, ground malting barley and boiled mangolds 
are excellent food. An experiment was made a couple of years ago (May, 
1900) at the Queensland Agricultural College by the Principal, Mr. J. Mahon. 
He experimented with eight pigs from common bred sows by a Berkshire boar. 
They were twenty-two weeks old when the experiment was begun. Tour pigs 
were placed in each of two pens. Those in the first pen were fed on as much boiled 
mangolds as they could consume together with kitchen swill. The second lot 
were fed on ground barley and boiled mangolds reduced to a thick slop. 1 need 
not give you all the details. The average daily feed of boiled mangolds was 
17 1b. The average daily feed of barley and mangolds mixed was 93 lb. The 
mangold-fed pigs consumed 28 lb. of food for an increase of 1 lb. in weight. 
The barley-fed animals consumed only 5% Ib. for the same increase. Three 
shillings worth of mangolds produced 4s. 6d. worth of pork, whilst 19s. 6d. 
worth of barley gave £1 10s. 23d. worth of pork. Therefore, the gain by 
feeding barley to pigs was shown to be 1s. 5d. per bushel when barley is worth 
2s. 6d. per bushel, and the feeding value of barley for pork production was 8s. 
11d. per bushel when pork was worth 22d. per lb. live weight. 
When I said that cooked potatoes were good pig-food, I should have 
adyised mixing them with some other food, such as oats or barley, because 
een oes tend to produce soft pork. Bonemeal and wood ashes should always 
e supplied to pigs. The effect of bonemeal and ashes is to save about 28 per 
cent. of the total amount of food required to produce 100 lb. of live weight. 
As for the little pigs just weaned, half-a-pint of new milk a day is sufficient ; 
after a few days, let them have it twice a day, and later on a quart, together 
with (still later on) alittle grain and meal. 
