Do these animals feel no joy in the performance of service which is bred into their bones and which it is unnatural or freakish for them to lack? No one who has watched the "bred-for-milk" cow can doubt that the joys of her life are eating, drinking, sleeping, and giving milk. Pushing her to the limit of her capacity is only intensifying her life, though, possibly, it may shorten it by a year or two. While she lives she knows all the happiness of cow life, and knows it to the full. What more can she ask? She would starve on the buffalo grass which supports her half-wild sister, "northers" would freeze her, and the snow would bury her. She is a product of high cow-civilization, and as such she must have the intelligent care of man or she cannot do her best. With this care she is a marvellous machine for the making of the only article of food which in itself is competent to support life in man. If my Holsteins are not machines, they resemble them so closely that I will not quarrel with the name.
What is true of the cow, is true also of the pork-making machine that we call the hog. His wild and savage progenitor is lost, and we have in his place a sluggish animal that is a very model as a food producer. His three pleasures are eating, sleeping, and growing fat. He follows these pleasures with such persistence that 250 days are enough to perfect him. It can certainly be no hardship to a pig to encourage him in a life of sloth and gluttony which appeals to his taste and to my profit.
Custom and interest make his life ephemeral; I make it comfortable. From the day of his birth until we separate, I take watchful care of him. During infancy he is protected from cold and wet, and his mother is coddled by the most nourishing foods, that she may not fail in her duty to him. During childhood he is provided with a warm house, a clean bed, and a yard in which to disport himself, and is fed for growth and bone on skim-milk, oatmeal, and sweet alfalfa. During his youth, corn meal is liberally added to his diet, also other dainties which he enjoys and makes much of; and during his whole life he has access to clean water, and to the only medicine which a pig needs,—a mixture of ashes, charcoal, salt, and sulphur.
When he has spent 250 happy days with me, we part company with feelings of mutual respect,—he to finish his mission, I to provide for his successor.
My early plan was to turn off 200 of this finished product each year, but I soon found that I could do much better. One can raise a crop of hogs nearly as quickly as a crop of corn, and with much more profit, if the food be at hand. There was likely to be an abundance of food. I was more willing to sell it in pig skins than in any other packages. My plan was now to turn off, not 200 hogs each year, but 600 or more. I had 60 well-bred sows, young and old, and I could count on them to farrow at least three times in two years. The litters ought to average 7 each, say 22 pigs in two years; 60 times 22 are 1320, and half of 1320 is 660. Yes, at that rate, I could count on about 600 finished hogs to sell each year. But if my calculations were too high, I could easily keep 10 more brood sows, for I had sufficient room to keep them healthy.
The two five-acre lots, Nos. 3 and 5, had been given over to the brood sows when they were not caring for young litters in the brood-house. Comfortable shelters and a cemented basin twelve feet by twelve, and one foot deep, had been built in each lot. The water-pipe that ran through the chicken lot (No. 4) connected with these basins, as did also a drain-pipe to the drain in the north lane, so that it was easy to turn on fresh water and to draw off that which was soiled. Through this device my brood sows had access to a water bath eight inches deep, whenever they were in the fields. My hogs, young or old, have never been permitted to wallow in mud. We have no mud-holes at Four Oaks to grow stale and breed disease. The breeding hogs have exercise lots and baths, but the young growing and fattening stock have neither. They are kept in runs twenty feet by one hundred, in bunches of from twenty to forty, according to age, from the time they are weaned until they leave the place for good. This plan, which I did not intend to change, opened a question in my mind that gave me pause. It was this: Can I hope, even with the utmost care, to keep the house for growing and fattening swine free from disease if I keep it constantly full of swine?
The more I thought about it the less probable it appeared. The pig-house had cost me $4320. Another would cost as much, if not more, and I did not like to go to the expense unless it were necessary. I worked over this problem for several days, and finally came to the conclusion that I should never feel easy about my swine until I had two houses for them, besides the brood-house for the sows. I therefore gave the order to Nelson to build another swine-house as soon as spring opened. My plan was, and I carried it out, to move all the colonies every three months, and to have the vacant house thoroughly cleaned, sprayed with a powerful germicide, and whitewashed. The runs were to be turned over, when the weather would permit, and the ground sown to oats or rye.
The new house was finished in June, and the pigs were moved into it on July 1st with a lease of three months. My mind has been easy on the question of the health of my hogs ever since; and with reason, for there has been no epizoötic or other serious form of disease in my piggery, in spite of the fact that there are often more than 1200 pigs of all degrees crowded into this five-acre lot. The two pig-houses and the brood-house, with their runs, cover the whole of the lot, except the broad street of sixty feet just inside my high quarantine fence, which encloses the whole of it.