Page:The Hog.djvu/190

188 this purpose. Soiling, or feeding pigs on cut green meat, has also its advantages, and is very much practised wherever there are crops and facilities for so doing. The best artificial grasses and green meat for swine are clover, lucerne, chicory, sainfoin, vetches, tares, and bean and pea-haulm. Some persons feed their swine on these matters in the fields; but it is a far better practice to turn them into yards or small enclosures, and there have the green meat brought to them, as by this means the animals are not able to wander about so much, exhausting their strength, and feeding in a desultory manner, but are kept quiet, and their dung more concentrated, especially if good litter or earth is laid down to receive and absorb it.

This feeding on green meat for awhile cools and purifies the blood, and keeps the animals in fair store condition, though it tends but very little to fatten them: where it is intended that it shall perform that office as well, it must not be simply cut green from the field and thrown to them, but chopped up small and salted, and mixed with the screenings of corn, or pollard, or meal, or roots, and moistened with some kind of wash and left to ferment.

Clover, hay, or dried vetches may be also given to swine, chopped up small, and in wash; the former with undoubted advantage, for clover and lucerne are allowed to be exceedingly nutritive to swine; but many persons consider vetches, whether green or dried, as heating.

There cannot be a doubt but that these are highly fattening in their nature, and also that swine, being somewhat allied to the carnivora, will greedily devour them; but the question is, Do they not tend to make the flesh strong and rank, to inflame the blood, to create in the animals a longing for more of such food, and thus lead them to destroy fowls, rabbits, ducks, and even the litters of their companions? Many will give blood, entrails, scraps of refuse meat, horse-flesh, and such like, to swine, but we should decidedly discourage such practices; the nearest approach to animal food we would admit should be pot-liquor, and dairy refuse. Animal food is bad for every kind of swine; and tends to make them savage and feverish, and often lays the foundation of serious inflammation of the intestines.

Regular hours of feeding rank among the first of the rules which ought to be observed; the pigs will soon learn to expect their meals at certain times, and the stomach will be ready for it; irregularity will therefore irritate the digestive powers, and prevent so much benefit being derived from the meal when it does come.