Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1881-08-04
Of Pasturags for Swine.

Importance Of Pasturage for Swine.
For some years past there has been
much increased dissatisfaction at the
greatly diminished proportion of mus
Gle In pork and bacon. The complaint
Is frequently heard about beef as well as
pork. The generality of hogs are mass
es OF mere lard, and if the production of
lard Is the only, or even the leading, OBJ
lect OF the modern system of breeding
hogs, the system had better be aban-
doned, as the vegetable fats and oils can
be expressed to much more advantage,
and in purer state. Much food that
is capable of forming muscle or flesh is
now wasted in the feeding of hogs to
form fat alone. / have frequently stated
that very fat hog of 400 pounds can
not bleed as much when killed, or sup
ply as much nutriment, as muscular
or lean-feshed one weighing only 200
pounds. ,.55...-,'..4g'..s
It is also the fact that the I'M
natural management, which has led to
| the great reduction of muscular struct-
ure, has led to still greater increase in
the proportion of fat in the hog as gen.
orally raised at present.
Hog meat is only valuable for food in
proportion to the quantity of muscle or
lean fesh it contains, and as the muscle
or flesh in pork can not be produced in
the growing pig, or maintained in full
grown hog, except in proportion to the
animals activity or use of his muscles,
it follows that exercise is as much of q
necessity to supply food value in cattle
and swine as to supply working value in
horses.
To increase the muscle and food value,
pigs and growing swine should have full
voluntary, natural exercise. Before as
Stunning that we can improve upon ma
ture, it should be remembered that ma
ture makes no mistakes. Nature says
muscle is the only part of meat that is
nourishing as food, and that the exercise
which supplies food in muscle is indis-
pensable to maintain the hog in a
healthy condition, and to prevent the
defamation of the hog race by cholera.
Nature and science teach these facts be-
yond denial or controversy. 1 believe,
therefore, that the locomotive organs
must be used alike to maintain health
and increase food value in pigs.
Accordingly any hog-raiser should
provide ten-acre pasture lot for every
200 hogs, which would be three ten-acre
lots for 600 hogs. These lots can be
fenced with good portable fence The
feed lots can be changed to any place as
required, the posts being set in and
driven with a bar, and the panels of the
fence bolted one on each side of the post
by one long bolt to each joint. Not
more than half the food of the hogs, at
any age or at any time, should be COM
posed of corn-rye or barley meal or
boiled pumpkins mixed, or artichokes,
boiled swedes, or some better food than
corn, forming the other half of the ra-
ton for hogs, large and small. In
sprouting, corn is matted, by which
starch supplies sugar, and hogs are very
fond of newly sprouted corn, as corn
growers are well aware 1t is best,
therefore, to have five or six acres in each
feed lot planted, and strew the shelled
corn over the blowing, and lightly har-
row it into the ground, say twice week.
By this process hogs are provided with
exercise in their natural manner, and to
the natural and notwithstanding ex-
tent. They gather the corn out of the
ground, either before or after its germi-
nation. This keeps them active, and
this exercise increases the muscular or
food supplying structure, and maintains
it in hogs which are full grown. Hogs
should have an abundance of water
three times day, at all times, and it is
best to have a windmill pump on high
ground, and cement pipes to convey
water into the feed lots where there are
no streams, to insure full and regular
supply of water, without which the hogs
can not be kept healthy.
There are experienced hog-feeders
who think grazing like cattle supplies
the hog with sufficient exercise to devel-
OPP in them full-sized muscles and main
tain them in good health. But l differ
very decidedly from such notions. In
roofing, the hogs nose rises and falls
from two to six inches, or about four
inches on the average, at each motion
of the head, and the back of the hog
rises and falls to a corresponding ex-
tent, giving corresponding motion in all
the Forthcoming parts of the hog, and
in this way forming the layers of red
flesh, and supplying mingled fat and
lean in pork and bacon. But in grazing
like a COW, the head is kept nearly in a
horizontal line, not being raised or low
cred half as much as in roofing; in fact,
the head is only occasionally lifted (to
facilitate swallowing) by cattle or hogs
when grazing, and the body motion in
grazing is probably less than half as
great in extent as while engaged in
roofing. Consequently the muscular
exercise taken by hogs in roofing in
creases their muscle and meat-value as
food more rapidly, and to a much larger
extent, than in grazing.
While clover is a good grazing crop
for hogs, and supplies excellent hay for
horses, it is also a root crop, for it has
been proved by weighing that there is
about as much substance in an acre of
clover roots as in an acre of tops. If
the root half of clover, can be harvested
or consumed with as little expense, it
will yield as much profit as the part
grown above ground. We have seen
the roots of clover harvested and consum-
ed by herd of roofing hogs, at great
saving of other feed, and therefore with
great profit in the excellent quality of
tieshy pork so cheaply and naturally
produced This gives great satisfaction