The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1883-10-12
Green Food for Swine.


Prof. S. r. Thompson, of the Ne
braska Agricultural College, speaks
from experience on pork growing, in
the american Agriculturist:
Green food makes thriftier and larger
hogs. Farmers who raise many pigs
and feed them exclusively on corn know
that some of the shotes will cease to
grow at an early age, begin to lay on
fat and never reach the size of good,
merchantable hogs. This tendency to
fatten prematurely, at the expense of
the bone growth. is not seen to any ex-
tent in grass-fed hogs. A pig fed on
bulkySgreen food will develop larger
stomach than one fed on concentrated
food, like corn; and when you come to
fatten it, this enlarged capacity viii
enable him to eat and digest more corn
and thus fatten faster than the other,
and be more profitable hog to grow
for market.
CRASHED hogs are healthier than
those granted. Every intelligent
breeder knows the advantages of feed
ing green food to sows about to farrow.
They have less difficulty with their pigs,
are less liable to destroy them, will give
more milk and nurse them better.
Crested hogs are less liable to disease.
The dreadful hog cholera is not much
to be feared where hogs have the run of
q good clover pasture. Undoubtedly,
if exposed to contagion, they would
take the disease, but they are not likely
to develop it. For example, farmer
had his hogs in a small pen destitute of
grass, with no water except muddy
pool, which soon was made as vile as
possible by the hogs. After awhile
the hogs began to die in considerable
numbers, with symptoms resembling
cholera. The owner was alarmed, took
them out of this pen, turned them on q
patch of green rye and gave them water
from a well. The disease was checked
and the deaths ceased.
How may green food be most cheaply
providedP Rye is. the crop best adapted
to this purpose, in the region west of
the Missouri. This should be sown
early in the fall, on well-prepared soil,
and it the growing season continues late
in the fall, so that the rye is likely to
joint, it must be fed down closely. The
best condition for it to 60 into winter is
when it covers the ground with a thick
mat of low leaves with but little tend
ency to shoot. Rye in this condition is
fit to turn on as soon as growth begins
in spring. The amount of feed which
two acres of such rye will furnish is
surprising. If not fed down too close,
and the stock be turned off about the
middle of Mayor the first of June, the
rye will still make fair crop. Hogs
are sometimes left on the rye until it
fills, when they will pull it down and
eat the heads; but this practice is not
commended. This is time, after the
rye is a foot high until it is in milk, that
hogs do not eat it well. a better plan
is to have a field of clover or of clover
and timothy or orchard grass ready for
the pigs when the rye is too large to be
longer available. When the rye is get
ting too large, the clover is in the best
state to turn upon. The clover will do
well until about the middle of une, when,
if the weather turns off hot and dry, it
grows quite slowly. 1t is well to have
patch of oats sown near and ready to
tide over this time If not needed it
can grow for the harvest. During the
hot weather of July, August and Sep
TENDER none of the crops named above
can be fully relied on, and this is es-
pecially true where they have been fed
too closely. Sorghum or brown dourra
may be sown broadcast about the last
of May and again the middle of June,
to be used in July and August. Expert
ence shows that sorghum may be eaten
off close to the grown when foot to
eighteen inches high, without serious in
jury. It will come up again and grow
right along. 1t is also an excellent plant
to stand dry weather. a# 5-