In July I bought four thoroughbred Holsteins, four years old, in fresh milk, and in October, six more, at an average price of $120 a head,—$1200 in all. These reënforcements made it possible for me to keep my contract with the middleman, and often to exceed it.
The dairy industry was now fairly launched and in working order. It had cost, not to be exact, $7000, and it was reasonably sure to bring back to the farm about $60 a week in cash, besides furnishing butter for the family and an immense amount of skim-milk and butter-milk to feed to the young animals on the place.
CHAPTER XXVI
LITTLE PIGS
By April 1st all my sows had farrowed. There was much variation in the number of pigs in these nineteen litters. One noble mother gave me thirteen, two of which promptly died. Three others farrowed eleven each, and so down to one ungrateful mother who contributed but five to the industry at Four Oaks. The average, however, was good; 154 pigs on April 10th were all that a halfway reasonable factory man could expect.
These youngsters were left with their mothers until eight weeks old; then they were put, in bunches of thirty, into the real hog-house, which was by that time completed. It was 200 feet long and 50 feet wide, with a 10-foot passageway through the length of it. On either side were 10 pens 20 feet by 20, each connected with a run 20 feet by 120. The house stood on a platform or bed of cement 90 by 200 feet, which formed the floor of the house and extended 20 feet outside of each wall, to secure cleanliness and a dry feeding-place in the open. The cement floor was expensive ($1120 as first cost), but I think it has paid for itself several times over in health and comfort to the herd. The structure on this floor was of the simplest; a double wall only five feet high at the sides, shingled roof, broken at the ridge to admit windows, and strong partitions. It cost $3100. As in the brood-sow house, there is a kitchen at the west end. The 150 little pigs made but a small showing in this great house, which was intended to shelter six hundred of all sizes, from the eight-weeks-old baby pig to the nine-months-old three-hundred-pounder ready for market.
Pigs destined for market never leave this house until ripe for killing. At six or seven months a few are chosen to remain on the farm and keep up its traditions; but the great number live their ephemeral lives of eight months luxuriously, even opulently, until they have made the ham and bacon which, poor things, they cannot save, and then pass into the pork barrel or the smoke-house without a sigh of regret. They toil not, neither do they spin; but they have a place in the world's economy, and they fit it perfectly. So long as one animal must eat another, the man animal should thank the hog animal for his generosity.
Now that my big hog-house seemed so empty, I would gladly have sent into the highways and byways to buy young stock to fill it; but I dared not break my quarantine. I could easily have picked up one hundred or even two hundred new-weaned pigs, within six or eight miles of my place, at about $1.50 each, and they would have grown into fat profit by fall; but I would not take a risk that might bear ill fruit. I had slight depressions of spirits when I visited my piggery during that summer; but I chirked up a little in the fall, when the brood sows again made good. But more of that anon.