Great care should always be exercised when hogs are hoisted before sticking. When hogs are hoisted alive to be stuck, very often when a very heavy hog is jerked from the floor, the hip is dislocated or sprained, and blood will be thrown out around the injured joint, so the Ham will be spoiled. Great care should also be exercised in driving the live hogs, as hogs are the heaviest and weakest and easiest injured of all animals.

Special pens should be provided for them, so they are not crowded, and so they have plenty of room when they are driven to the killing pen. They should be handled very carefully, and piling up and crowding should be avoided as much as possible. Many hams are injured by overcrowding the hogs in the killing pens, for when hogs smell blood they become excited and nervous, and unless they have plenty of room, they will pile upon each other and bruise themselves so that there will be many skin-bruised hams, and the flesh will be full of bruises. Men driving hogs should never use a whip. The best thing to use in driving hogs is a stick about two feet long, to the end of which is fastened a piece of canvas three inches wide and two feet long. By striking the hogs with this canvas, it makes a noise which will do more towards driving them, without injury, than the whip which will injure and discolor the skin.

MACHINE USED IN LARGER PACKING HOUSES FOR HOISTING HOGS.
STICKING HOGS IN A MODERN PACKING HOUSE.
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Men sticking hogs should be sure to make a good, large opening in the neck, three or four inches long, in order to give the blood a good, free flow. It is very necessary to sever the veins and arteries in the neck, so as to get all of the blood out of the hog. The man who does the sticking must be careful not to stick the knife into the shoulder, for if the shoulder is stuck, the blood settles there, and the bloody part will have to be trimmed out after the hog is cut up. In large Packing Houses, there is a report made out every day, of the number of shoulder-stuck hogs, and the sticker must sign this report before it is sent to the office. This shows the sticker the kind of work he is doing and makes him more careful. In small houses, most butchers stick the hogs on the floor and let them bleed there. Those who can possibly do it should hoist the hog by the hind leg before it is stuck or immediately after it is stuck, as the case may be, so as to allow the hog to properly bleed. When the hog is properly hoisted by one hind leg, alive, and then stuck while hanging, it will kick considerably and the kicking and jerking of the hog will help in pumping out all of the blood, making a much better bled carcass than if the hog is first stunned with a hammer and stuck on the floor. The better the hog is bled, the better the meat will be for curing.

HOW HOGS ARE STUCK IN A LARGE MODERN PACKING HOUSE.

SCALDING HOGS.
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It is impossible to give the exact temperature one should use in scalding hogs, as this will vary under different circumstances. In winter the hair sticks much tighter than in summer and requires more scalding and more heat than in summer. Hogs raised in the South, in a warm climate, will scald much easier than those raised in a northern climate. A butcher will soon learn which temperature is best adapted to his own locality and the kind of hogs he is scalding.