The Portland daily press., 1874-08-31
THE FARM AND HOUSEHOLD.
Grass-Fed Swineo

OIdSS Is lne natural 10Od OF IIeat caftle a n
sheep in their wild state, and when thew are
domesticated, it is still furnished to them for
the production of meat and milk and labor
on the score of economy, heathfulness. and
natural fitness, although very frequently sup
piemented by variety of other food. Swine.
also, before they are tanned, subsist LARGELY
upon grass as well as roots and nuts. bpt
when they are Drought under subiection IN
man, they are almost universally deprived
OF this wholesome natural food, and PAM
pered with all kinds of artificial substances.
many of them gross and unnatural. IT is
quite generally true, that wild fruits and wild
animals are improved by being brought u.nder
the hand of civilization; but when natdralists
infoIm us that the wild boar of the forest has
actually retrograded since he made the ac
4uaintance of man, we regard it as a sbarn
thrust at cur boasted superiority. Not only
have his civilized descendants become stunid
and filthy, gross and degenerate in manners
and morals, but worse still, in some indefna-
bic way, they have contracted diseases which,
while They may be harmless to themselves,
have transmitted taint and de ath to the hu-
man family 1t was not so in the days of our
ancestors, when the bear's head with fierce
tusks was borne on smoking platter to grace
the festal board, and the savory fitch of
Drawn or bacon was never wanting in the
larder OF sanity abbot or doughty knight. To
what special cause, this deterioration is to be
attributed, it might be difficult to say and were
the entire race TO go before the public upon
their general merits, we suppose they would
ind themselves surrounded by friends and foes
alike. Like the descendants of Ham, who
nave been imagined by some to be dwelling
under the weight of an inherited curse these
ANIMALS would find persons who would still
fasten to them the words of the great law
giver when he spake to the children OF Israel,
"And the swine, though he divide the hoof,
and be cloven-footed, yet he cheweth not the
cud; he is unclean to you, of their flesh shall
ye not eat, and their carcass shalt We not
touch;' and would repeat the account of the
unclean spirits, the devils who entered into
two thousand of their race with the approval
OF Jesus Christ; thus proving that under the
old and new dispensation they found no favor,
and, therefore, it was Of no avail to contend
against manifest destiny as they were ''not
only doomed but damned" Others, how
ever, whose charity never failsth, and whose
hearts go out to beast and bird, and whose
faith in the limitless future of progress and
acFeioPmont never ifalters, believe that~eVen
this gross and sluggish animal may be refined
and almost spiritualized, that under his ribs of
fat soul may yet becreated and there may
be even for him redemption from his low es-
tate.
Nevertheless, we do not propose TO dis
cuss the question whether on the whole the
creation of this animal has been benefit or
an injury to the human race or whether the
use OF his flesh was forbidden to the Jews
simply because he did not chew the cad But
we believe that the nearer he can come to
this the better, and the more grass and roots
he eats the better it will be for his own health
and the health of those who partake of his
flesh. Why shall we persist in loading his
frame with mountain of fat, so that he lards
the lean earth as he moves over it? Is it not
in accordance with the laws of physiology
and hygiene, as well as common sense,
to believe that a great accumulation of
fat so unnatural to the original condition of
the animal must be productive of mischiev-
Gus results? We trust that social scientists
or advanced agriculturists, will onsider that
the appropriate limits to be assigned to feed
ing and fattening swine, affords a fed
worthy of examination. We are inclined to
believe that they should not be made scaven-
gers or fed with unwholesome food, that
they should not be compelled to become
filthy in their habits, that they should rot be
confined for great length of time in houses
or pens, and they should not be kept for
more than year, except for stock raising.
Give them the free range of the pasture, or
of extensive yards which afford an abundance
of grasses and roots. Allow them to have
an opportunity for keeping their bodies clean,
shut them up only for a few weeks prior to
the final fattening, and feed them sparinoly
or not at all, upon cooked food, and then will
they be fit for the table. The southern
practice of raising them for flesh rather than
fat, is certainly to be commended; and were
their growth to be limited by statute to two
or three hundred pounds weight, nobody
would be harmed.
We are glad to learn that our State College,
among other experimental investigations,
has for some time been testing the COM
parative merits of raw and cooked food in
fattening swine; and we understand the
result demonstrates the superiority of the
former method. We append some extracts
in confirmation ofour position that we ought
70 furnish swine with their natural food
A correspondent of the Germantown
Telegraph writes: My own theory of pork
raising based upon experience, observation, |
and probably a little philosophy of things, if
written for the benefit of others, would be
about as follows: Daring the hot summer
months would feed very little solid feed,
such as corn in the ear or uncracked. /
would keep hogs upon green feed constantly,
either grass, oats or rye, and feed them at
regular intervals, once or twice day, upon
mashed feed, either shorts, chopped oats or
rye, buckwheat ETC., feed in troughs. When
fed in this way and at the same time allowed
access to water and shade, hogs will bear
crowdng through the hot months, very
good time, if not the best, to take on flesh.
This puts them in the best of condition for
corn feeding, which should commence about
the first OF September, when the new crop is
still soft and tender. Treated in this way
hogs become probably as perfect as any meth
cd could make them. Upon the whole, l
believe it the cheapest and most economical
The Sacramento Union says: st is a
strange sounding proposition to feed hogs
with hay, but we have experience in this line,
and however strange or odd it may seem it is,
Notwithstanding, a fact that hogs will not on
ly eat alfalfa (lucerne or Spanish clover) hay,
but they will do well on it. We fist diScov-
cred the fact by throwing lot of alfalfa chaff
from which the seed had been cleaned, over
to some hogs for nest when to our surprise
they devoured it with as much greediness as
they would so much oats or barley. Our own
experience and observation since has proved
to us that good alfalfa hay with plenty of wa
ter will keep hogs in good growing condi-
ton all through the winter. They NAV be
foddered in the same way you would fodder
sheep or cattle, but if cut up with a cutting
machine and wet before feeding, they win eat
it cleaner and do better on it,