Page:The Hog.djvu/207

205 should be separate styes for breeding sows, for porkers, and fattening hogs. Not more than three or four of the latter should be in one sty. The food should be given in troughs, in a separate compartment from that in which the hogs lie down, and no litter should be allowed there. The floor should be of brick or stone; should be frequently washed clean, and the troughs should be cleaned out before every meal. Any of the food left from the last meal should be taken out and given to the store pigs. A very convenient contrivance for keeping the troughs clean is to have a flap or door made with hinges, so that it can swing, and alternately be fastened by a bolt to the inside or outside edge of the trough. When the hogs have fed sufficiently, the door is swung in, and the trough easily cleaned out. It remains on the inside till feeding time, when the food is poured in without any impediment from the greedy hogs, who cannot get at it till the door is swung out. This simple contrivance saves a great deal of trouble, and is easily adapted to any common sty. It is a great advantage to be able to inspect the styes without going into them; and this is effected by placing them under a common roof, which may conveniently be a lean-to to the boiling-house or any other building, with a passage between them.

"Where numerous pigs are kept, it will be advantageous to have a double row of styes, with a paved alley between them; there should be good drainage, by which all refuse is carried off to a manure-pit, and the greatest cleanliness should be maintained. Six breeding sows, giving each two litters per annum, will produce yearly upwards of a hundred pigs; of these, fifty or sixty may be fattened at the latter part of autumn, through the winter, and during the months of February and March, for bacon; the younger brood may be killed as porkers, or sold off as stores. With respect to the steaming apparatus, it will be found available for other animals on the farm, as horses, &c., to which steamed potatoes and other roots may be profitably allowed.

"The breeding sows should be kept each by itself in a large and commodious sty, and the store and fattening pigs should have their respective tenements. Some recommend that the floor of the sleeping-shed be made of planks, as bricks are cold and apt to induce cramp or diarrhœa; certainly wood is preferable to bricks. Where bricks are used, they should be set in cement, in order that no filtration may take place through the interstices, and thereby keep the soil underneath in a state of wetness, whence noxious gases will necessarily arise and generate disease, to the great loss of the farmer. Another thing is desirable, namely, that the roof of the sty, whether composed of slates, tiles, or slabs of stone, should have a gutter in order to carry off the rain; this may be easily contrived, and at little expense, and will often keep the sty from being flooded,"—.