KEEPING PIGS.
139. Next after the Cow comes the Pig; and, in many cases, where a cow cannot be kept, a pig or pigs may be kept. But these are animals not to be ventured on without due consideration as to the means of feeding them; for a starved pig is a great deal worse than none at all. You cannot make bacon as you can milk, merely out of the garden. There must be something more. A couple of flitches of bacon are worth fifty thousand Methodist sermons and religious tracts. The sight of them upon the rack tends more to keep a man from poaching and stealing than whole volumes of penal statutes, though assisted by the terrors of the hulks and the gibbet. They are great softeners of the temper, and promoters of domestic harmony. They are a great blessing; but they are not to be had from herbage or roots of any kind; and, therefore, before a pig be attempted, the means ought to be considered.
140. Breeding sows are great favourites with Cottagers in general; but I have seldom known them to answer their purpose. Where there is an outlet, the sow will, indeed, keep herself by grazing in summer, with a little wash to help her out: and when her pigs come, they are many in number; but they are a heavy expense. The sow must live as well as a fatting hog, or the pigs will be good for little. It is a great mistake, too, to suppose that the condition of the sow previous to pigging is of no consequence; and, indeed, some suppose, that she ought to be rather bare of flesh at the pigging time. Never was a greater mistake; for if she be in this state, she presently becomes a mere rack of bones; and then, do what you will, the pigs will be poor things. However fat she may be before she farrow, the pigs will make her lean in a week. All her fat goes away in her milk, and unless the pigs have a store to draw upon, they pull her down directly; and, by the time they are three weeks old, they are starving for want; and then they never come to good.
141. Now, a cottager’s sow cannot, without great expense, be kept in a way to enable her to meet the demands of her farrow. She may look pretty well; but the flesh she has upon her is not of the same nature as that which the farm-yard sow carries about her. It is the result of grass, and of poor grass, too, or other weak food; and not made partly out of corn and whey and strong wash, as in the case of the farmer’s sow. No food short of that of a fatting hog will enable her to keep her pigs alive; and this she must have for ten weeks, and that at a great expense. Then comes the operation, upon the principle of Parson Malthus, in order to check population; and there is some risk here, though not very great. But there is the weaning; and who, that knows any thing about the matter, will think lightly of the weaning of a farrow of pigs! By having nice food given them, they seem, for a few days, not to miss their mother. But their appearance soon shows the want of her. Nothing but the very best food, and that given in the most judicious manner, will keep them up to any thing like good condition; and, indeed, there is nothing short of milk that will effect the thing well. How should it be otherwise? The very richest cow’s milk is poor, compared with that of the sow; and, to be taken from this and put upon food, one ingredient of which is water, is quite sufficient to reduce the poor little things to bare bones and staring hair, a state to which cottagers’ pigs very soon come in general; and, at last, he frequently drives them to market, and sells them for less than the cost of the food which they and the sow have devoured since they were farrowed. It was, doubtless, pigs of this description that were sold the other day at Newbury market, for fifteen pence a piece, and which were, I dare say, dear even as a gift. To get such a pig to begin to grow will require three months, and with good feeding too in winter time. To be sure it does come to be a hog at last; but, do what you can, it is a dear hog.
142. The Cottager, then, can hold no competition with the Farmer in the breeding of pigs, to do which, with advantage, there must be milk, and milk, too, that can be advantageously applied to no other use. The cottager’s pig must be bought ready weaned to his hand, and, indeed, at four months old, at which age, if he be in good condition, he will eat any-thing that an old hog will eat. He will graze, eat cabbage leaves, and almost the stumps. Swedish turnip tops or roots, and such things, with a little wash, will keep him along in very good growing order. I have now to speak of the time of purchasing, the manner of keeping, of fatting, killing, and curing; but these I must reserve till my next Number.
No. VI.
KEEPING PIGS—(continued.)
143. As in the case of cows so in that of pigs, much must depend upon the situation of the cottage; because all pigs will graze; and therefore, on the skirts of forests or commons, a couple or three pigs may be kept, if the family be considerable; and especially if the cottager brew his own beer, which will give him grains to assist the wash. Even in lanes, or on the sides of great roads, a pig will find a good part of his food from May to November; and if he be yoked, the occupiers of the neighbourhood must be churlish and brutish indeed, if they give the owner any annoyance.
144. Let me break off here for a moment to point out to my readers the truly excellent conduct of Lord Winchilsea and Lord Stanhope, who, as I read, have taken great pains to make the labourers on their estates comfortable, by allotting to each a piece of ground sufficient for the keeping of a cow. I once, when I lived at Botley, proposed to the copyholders and other farmers in my neighbourhood, that we should petition the Bishop of Winchester, who was lord of the manors thereabouts, to grant titles to all the numerous persons called trespassers on the wastes; and also to give titles to others of the poor parishioners, who were willing to make, on the skirts of the wastes, enclosures not exceeding an acre each. This I am convinced, would have done a great deal towards relieving the parishes, then greatly burdened by men out of work. This would have been better than digging holes one day to fill them up the next. Not a single man would agree to my proposal! One, a bullfrog farmer (now, I hear, pretty well sweated down,) said it would only make them saucy! And one, a true disciple of Malthus, said, that to facilitate their rearing of children was a harm! This man had, at the time, in his own occupation, land that had formerly been six farms, and he had, too, ten or a dozen children. I will not mention names; but this farmer will now, perhaps, have occasion to call to mind what I told him on that day, when his opposition, and particularly the ground of it, gave me the more pain, as he was a very industrious, civil, and honest man. Never was there a greater mistake than to suppose that men are made saucy and idle by just and kind treatment. Slaves are always lazy and saucy; nothing but the lash will extort from them either labour or respectful deportment. I never met with a saucy Yankee (New Englander) in my life. Never servile; always civil. This must necessarily be the character of freemen living in a state of competence. They have nobody to envy; nobody to complain of; they are in good humour with mankind. It must, however, be confessed, that very little, comparatively speaking, is to be accomplished by the individual efforts even of benevolent men like the two noblemen before mentioned. They have a strife to maintain against the general tendency of the national state of things. It is by general and indirect means, and not by partial and direct and positive regulations, that so great a good as that which they generously aim at can be accomplished. When we are to see such means adopted, God only knows; but, if much longer delayed, I am of opinion, that they will come too late to prevent something very much resembling a dissolution of society.