But their activities were soon concentrated when the pan of warm mush was shoved into the pen. Such a grunting and pushing at each other as those three pigs did, made both the girls laugh.
Then Natalie said: “Jan, Rachel told me while she was mixing this mush, that your pigs will need from six to eight quarts of milk each day and a peck of corn-meal, if you only feed them on this stuff.”
“Oh, Nat!” gasped Janet, quickly figuring. “And milk is fifteen cents a quart when called for at Ames’s farmhouse!”
“You’ll simply have to feed them table-scraps, Jan.”
“When we go to Four Corners again, I’m going to ask Mr. Tompkins what he feeds his pigs. I won’t ask Mr. Ames, because he wants to sell me the milk, but the storekeeper will tell.”
There Janet learned that she could and should feed the pigs with bran, boiled potatoes or the parings, all the greens that were cut from the vegetables, wheat screenings and middlings, and whatever table-waste was wholesome and clean for the pigs to root about in at odd times between meals.
Janet also learned from Si Tompkins, that it was not necessary to buy straw and bed the pigs down every night with it; but dry leaves, or dead hay, mixed with a little straw was as good for bedding as anything. A list of the grain was made and ordered from the mill that stood on the road to White Plains, and then Janet felt more resigned to stock-raising than she had been all that day.
On the way home Natalie remarked: “I should think any animal would grow big and fat on such a diet as Tompkins suggests.”
“I was thinking that we could feed the pigs your garden greens when we haven’t any left at the house,” was Janet’s reply.
“No siree! My garden greens stay exactly where they are—in the ground. When they are grown enough to harvest I’ll see that we eat them ourselves,” she said.