SWINE.
Hogs are evil in their propensities, mischievous and filthy in their habits, and yet profitable to the farmer. Every farmer should keep a few in proportion to the refuse grain and various slops that his establishment may afford. Buying hogs and then purchasing grain on which to fatten them in the usual way is the poorest economy. Such pork is often made to cost from twelve to twenty cents per pound.
There are many breeds of swine highly recommended. Some of the varieties of the Chinese are the most prolific and have the greatest tendency to fattening of any known. They have formed the basis of the great improvements in the breeds in Great Britain. Farmers will be able to select the best breed from their own knowledge and observation, better than from any directions we can give them. Every new variety will be introduced by dealers, and farmers must be cautious how they accept their representations.
Age of Swine for Pork.—It is most profitable and least troublesome, to keep over winter, no swine but breeding sows, to have pigs early in spring, to kill in autumn. Of any of the good breeds, they can be made to weigh from 300 to 350 pounds, by the proper time for killing. The practice of keeping swine till eighteen or twenty-four months old, and only fattening them late in the fall and beginning of winter, is very unprofitable. It is best to give pigs about what they will eat, from the time of beginning to feed them until they are slaughtered. This is in every way most economical. It secures fattening in the hot weather in summer, when pork can be made faster and cheaper than at any other time. Many farmers begin to fatten their pork, after the season in which it can most rapidly and cheaply be done.
Hogs having been kept poor, on being fed freely for fattening, become cloyed, and much time is lost, while those that always have had what they would eat, of good wholesome food, always have a good appetite for as much as they need, and not root over and injure more.
Food for Swine.—They do better shut up in a pen, but where they can get access to the ground. All edible roots are good and all the grains. But grain should be ground or soaked. It pays well to cook all food for swine. Boiled potatoes, carrots, beets, and parsnips, are all good. Ground feed should be mixed with cooked vegetables. The disposition that swine have to root deep in the ground, indicates the want of something, not found in sufficient quantities in their ordinary food. Numerous experiments show that that deficiency is abundantly supplied by having charcoal within their reach. The stories of fattening pork wholly on charcoal, which we find in the books, we do not credit. But that small quantities of it are uniformly healthy for swine, is an established fact. The question of sour food has many respectable advocates. Cultivators and writers take different sides of the question, based as they say upon their carefully-tried and noted experiments, one affirming that fermented food is superior, and others that it has done his hogs positive injury. This discrepancy grows out of not carefully distinguishing the different kinds of fermentation, the sweet, the vinous, the acid, and the putrid. The first makes excellent food, the second will do quite well, the third is injurious, and the last absolutely poisonous. As it requires much care and observation to get this right, and mistakes are easy, it is best to take the sure method, give them food in a natural state, ground, and either cooked or fed raw. Either will make good pork at a reasonable cost, but cooked food is preferable.
Sows are prevented from destroying their young by quiet, plenty of food, and little animal food, and but a very little straw in a dry pen, or washing the pig's backs with a strong decoction of aloes.
TOBACCO.
This is a plant abhorred by everything but man and the tobacco-worm. Its use for chewing and snuffing is happily becoming more and more offensive to refined society, and we hope it may, after a long struggle, go out of use. For those who will cultivate it as an article of commerce, the following brief directions are sufficient. Burn over a small bed, on which sow the seed early in March. When the leaves are as large as a quarter of a dollar, transplant them in deep, rich soil, or on new land, in rows three feet apart each way, or four feet one way and two the other. Tend as cabbage. It is necessary, twice in the season, to destroy, by hand, the large green worms that feed on this plant. When the plants are from two and a half to three and a half feet high, according to the richness of the soil on which they grow, pick out the head or blossom-buds, except in the few plants you would have go to seed. Pinch off also the suckers, or shoots behind the leaves, as they come out. When the leaves are full grown and begin to ripen, which is known by the small, dusky spots appearing on the leaves, cut up the stalks and lay them down singly to wilt; when they are thoroughly wilted, lay them together, that they may sweat for forty-eight hours, then hang them up in a tolerably tight room to dry—hang across poles, one on each side. A sharp stick put through the but of the stalks and laid over the pole, leaving one stalk on each side, is a very good method. When it becomes well dried, pick off the leaves, and tie the stems together in small bunches, and pack away in hogsheads or boxes, in a dry place.
We recommend to every agriculturist to cultivate a little tobacco—not for himself or others to chew, snuff, or smoke, but to use in destroying insects. A strong decoction, used in washing animals, will destroy lice on horses and cattle, and ticks on sheep. Tobacco-water applied to plants, or trees, will effectually destroy all insects with which they may be infested. Boil tobacco-stems or stalks, or the refuse-tobacco of the cigar-makers, until you make a strong decoction, and apply with a syringe, or in any other way, and it will prove more effectual than anything else known. Tobacco-stems, stalks, or leaves, laid around peach-trees in the month of May, will protect them from the attacks of the borer. This is also a good manure for peach-trees.