Under the modern system of pig-keeping it is more profitable to give some additional and concentrated food to the pigs having their liberty, it is therefore wise to secure the full benefit arising from the richer living by running the pigs where the manure can be utilised, and no better place than an orchard can be found, since shelter from sun and wind is furnished by the fruit trees, and the pigs deposit their urine and excrement in exactly the place where it is most urgently required.
The practice of growing considerable areas of rape or cole seed, artichokes, peas of various kinds, beans, etc., to be fed off by pigs is not followed extensively in this country, although pig-keepers in the United States, Canada, Germany, Denmark, etc., have a partiality to it, since it is declared to save labour and to bring the land into a good manurial condition for the growth of corn crops; still some few of our more advanced farmers have been in the habit of grazing off lucerne, clovers, and even permanent and temporary grasses by the aid of pigs, which have also received in addition a varying amount of roots, corn, or meal. It is asserted, and evidence is available to prove the truth of the statement, that land can be economically and quickly and vastly improved by following the system referred to above. The scarcity and high market value of miller's offals and of meals such as used in the past to be utilised to a great extent in the feeding of pigs, has caused pig-keepers to seek for other foods to take their place. The residuum from the crushing of palm nuts, cocoa-nuts, and ground nuts has been most successfully used in connection with various forms of vegetable food; even sows have reared good litters of pigs on about 2 lbs. of a mixture of the meals remaining from the extraction of the oil from the nuts mentioned, with the addition of some form of vegetable food. This last has comprised cooked potatoes, raw artichokes, mangolds, kohl rabi, swedes, cabbages, etc., during the winter months, and grass, lucerne, clover, vetches, cole seed, etc., during the summer months. Fattening pigs will require a somewhat larger quantity of concentrated food and a reduced amount of vegetable food. The pre-war belief that sharps or middlings only was the most suitable food for sows with litters and for newly weaned pigs has been somewhat modified. Whether or not the quality and price of middlings will be restored after the war and thus its use become general as of old, must be left, but it is probable that in the future a certain proportion of the meals referred to will continue to be used for both breeding and fattening pigs.
CHAPTER XV
PIG-FATTENING
If there be one task which is considered to be within the capacity of any individual, it is that of feeding a pig. In the good old times, the one thing needful was a good supply of barley meal, as much of this as the pig could possibly eat was placed into its trough each day until the pig was thought to be fat enough for slaughter. This was a very simple and at the same time a very costly process and was looked upon as the second of the two chief acts in the life of a pig. The first consisted of building up a frame on which fat could be stored. Just why these two processes were not combined has never been fully explained. One excuse made for this uneconomical process is that our forbears must have considered that there must be two distinct periods in the life of any animal intended for the food of man, that in which the structure was erected, and that in which the building was completely furnished with the material—flesh—in a state which most nearly satisfied the requirements or fancies of humanity. The system of first growing the frame and then packing it with flesh was not alone followed by the owners of pigs, as it was also adopted with cattle, which in the good old times passed three or four years in a state of semi-starvation ere they were placed on our best pastures to produce beef. Sheep, again, spent two or three years in building up their frames and in the production of a limited quantity of wool of inferior quality and strength, before they were considered in a fit state to make mutton economically. Another excuse which could have been offered by our forbears, but which is not now available, is that the cattle, sheep, and pigs of former times required age before it was possible to render them sufficiently fat for slaughter.
The very great improvement which has taken place during the past half century, in wellnigh every breed of pig, has deprived our present day pig-breeders of such an excuse, yet they persist in far too many instances in following the old-fashioned and uneconomical system of first growing the pig and then fatting it, whereas it is not only possible but infinitely more profitable to combine the two operations. So many persons have been in the habit of looking upon the pig as a mere scavenger or an animal to put out of sight certain articles containing a small amount of nutriment which, undisposed of, would become a nuisance or offensive to one or other of our organs. Even the pig itself has been considered by many farmers, especially those termed gentlemen farmers, as a necessary nuisance, whereas the pig is really a machine for the conversion of farm produce into meat, and like all machines, its output will depend entirely on the quantity and quality of the raw material, and the manner in which it is supplied. If the raw material be of inferior quality and supplied irregularly, or in too limited quantities, the article manufactured will be more costly and of an inferior quality. An extension in the time of manufacture means increased cost for fuel and for labour in attendance on the machinery. A certain quantity of fuel is being continually used in the furnace whether the engine is running at full power or at half power. It is exactly the same with the meat making machine, the pig every day of its existence consumes a certain quantity of food for which it gives one return only, its life. It has been conclusively proved that each pig weighing 100 lbs. requires 2 lbs. of food daily to enable it to sustain life, i.e. to replace loss of tissue, to provide heat, progression, etc., so that if a pig lives six months longer than is actually necessary to enable it to manufacture a certain weight of meat, it will have eaten to waste over 3 cwt. of good food.
A pig is like unto any other machine, it will produce the manufactured article most cheaply when it is fully supplied with the most suitable raw material. There is not the slightest doubt that the least costly pork is that which is produced by the pig which spends its whole time in the object of its existence, the manufacture of pork.
There is a further point of great importance. Wellnigh all those materials which are used in the feeding of pigs contain the constituents necessary for the building up of the frame and for the accumulation of fat or, as it is commonly termed, the making of meat. Evidently nature intended that the two operations should be carried on simultaneously. Those constituents which are required in the building up of the frame cannot be entirely used in the formation of fat, consequently if the frame is first built up and then an attempt is made to lay on flesh, a considerable portion of the building up constituents are simply wasted, since the pig has no need for them and cannot make complete use of them. They simply pass through the pig after taxing it to digest them, and are wasted.
Opinions and practices with regard to pig fatting have changed very much during the past half century, and especially so since the full effect of the fearful war has been felt. Rather before the first-mentioned period, the late Sir John Lawes, whose researches and experiments have been of lasting benefit to agriculturists, undertook to carry out experiments in connection with pig-breeding, and the result which appears to have impressed itself most upon the writers of the day was that barley meal was the best single food for the fatting of pigs. At the time named, our importations of maize and of many other materials now used in stock and especially pig-breeding were not of anything the magnitude of the period prior to the war, still, it seems to be strange to the enlightened pig-breeder of to-day that more serious endeavours should not have been made to determine the value of a mixed diet for pigs, since this had been proved to be beneficial and necessary in the case of human beings whose organs are so very similar to that of the despised pig.
Fortunately for us, and indeed for the stock-keepers in all parts of the world, experiments in the feeding of stock have been carried out in various countries, Denmark, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Germany, and indeed in nearly all countries, save to any great extent in England. In connection with pigs, the practices of a few of our more intelligent pig-keepers have been confirmed. Amongst these ideas which the old-fashioned ones looked upon as fads, was that of feeding pigs of all ages and especially fatting pigs on a certain proportion of vegetable food. Experiments have conclusively proved that the substitution of some 10 per cent of vegetable matter in place of an equal amount of meal or concentrated food, does not result in the slightest reduction in the live weight gain of the fatting pig, and further that the old idea that a limited quantity of vegetable food fed to a fatting pig tended to render the pork soft and to waste in the cooking was not founded on fact. Another fact which has evolved from these experiments is that the pig will make far greater progress on an equal amount of a mixture of foods than if fed solely on one food. This was clearly proved in many experiments as at the Wisconsin Agricultural Station, where one lot of pigs was fed on middlings alone, a second lot on corn meal alone, and a third lot on a mixture of corn meal and middlings. To make an increase of 100 lbs. in their live weight, the pigs in Lot 1 ate 522 lbs. of middlings, those in Lot 2 ate 537 lbs. of corn meal to make an equal increase in weight, whilst Lot 3, which were fed on a mixture of corn meal and middlings, required only 439 lbs., or a saving of one-fifth in the weight of food. In experiments with regard to the food value of corn meal and middlings carried out at the Missouri College, middlings also gave the best returns, but unfortunately the ages of the pigs used in the trials are omitted. This is important as middlings are considered to be of more value in the feeding of young than of older pigs, whilst the reverse holds good of corn or maize meal. Other trials were carried out at Wisconsin with the use of wheat meal alone as compared with a mixture of half wheat and half corn meal. In these the average quantity of wheat meal required for 100 lbs. increased live weight was 500 lbs., whilst only 485 lbs. of the mixture of wheat and corn meals was needed to obtain an equal increase or a saving of some 5 per cent was obtained by mixing the meals.