Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1886-09-23

general parasites do not seek a particular
organ because they prefer that organ, but
because it is weak enough to allow of their
depredations. There is no part of the
skin that they would not attack, if it were
vulnerable, and the blood was in such
condition as to favor their depre
dations. But the skin is able to
resist, and hence they seek the weaker
membranes and muscular tissues. 1t is,
perhaps, impossible for us to keep our
animals or ourselves in such strict accord
ance with the laws of nature as to prevent
sickness, and hence disease and death
from disease are in the world and are
more or less active. But we can and
should live up to the knowledge that we
have. We know that if child's bones are
weak, it may not only lead to deformity,
but that the child is not vigorous. That
is Just as true with the animal, though it
may not show it as plainly as the child
would. If hog has never been furnish
ed with material with which to build up
its bony and muscular system, it is prac-
tically in a diseased condition all the
| time. If the same state of affairs existed
with an animal of less vigorous digestion,
it would go to pieces and become
wreck at once. But the
working very successfully while its system
is perfect bubble, ready to collapse at
any moment. But no one should be sur
prised to find any organ or all of the
organs of such hog refusing to perform
their offices at any time. Hence such an
animal is constantly disposed to disease.
Cholera, in some of its forms, breaks on
in herd and sweeps through a COM
munity. The learned veterinarian or I'M
learned pig doctor whose services are
sought attributes the difficulty, in all
probability, as we have frequently had
occasion to know, he is astonished
when he arrives at the farm where
the disease exists, to find every
thing as neat as pin; and we have had
the doctors say to US, In such cases, Il
was dumbfounded, and knew not what to
| attribute the disease to-" AS said before
our hogs, or other animals, may live in
violation of the laws of nature, without
our knowledge, and hence sicken and die
under apparently the most intelligent
treatment. But there can be no question
at all that in the vast majority of cases
| in which the cholera appears, where the
surroundings are clearly, the cause is
too much corn and consequent unequal
development of the system. Our unlim-
tied supply of corn in this cousty has not
been an unmixed blessing. 1t is so
plentiful with US that we feed it
In ruinOus excess, even when we
are not prompted to make a hog before
the animal has ceased to be pig and
there are millions of dollars lost every
year through the sickness and death Of
animals that have been stuffed with this
comparatively unnourishing, but the fat
|
except in limited quantities, is not growth
or an clemens of strength 1t is a dis
-unquestionably disease-because
it is wholly useless, and not only that,
but burden. Whatever, is useless in the
economy of nature is at variance with
nature, and excessive fat is useless as a
wen an animal so far as the needs of a
system go.
Now the constant exclusive feeding of
corn from the time the pig will eat it I'M
1 til it is taken to market, under our very
bad system-as we think-of fattening
| hogs the first year, is direct effort to
create a diseased condition. 1t makes
fat and nothing else. The bones and
muscles are not nOurished; and thew can
not be forced to maturity, except to a
limited extent. They may be said to be
forced when the animal is fed all the bone
and muscle forming food that it will as
simulate, as distinguished from starving
it, but there must be time allowed for a
full development. The process can not
be fastened, except in limited degree.
But we can force fat whenever we wish to-
We can fatten the pig or fatten the hog.
And we do the latter, turning the hog off,
if it does not break down before we
get it off, when it is imperfectly
grown, having fed it the
most costly foods during its
whole life, and then begin again to raise
another litter in the same expensive
way. While the early fattening is doing
| this, raising two filters at the highest
possible expense, the breeder and feeder
who keeps his swine until the second
| year is keeping his one litter growing in
comparatively inexpensive way, and is
building up his hogs every day and every
hour to resist disease more successfully
than mushroom development can pos
sibly do. This has been our practice for
many years, and if there is one thing
that we have ever been signally success
! full in it is in breeding and fattening
swine. We begin now to feed our sec
ond- year hogs with corn, and they will
begin to respond at once grandly, and
they will keep on growing through the
winter, if we want to, and feed them
properly.