St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1898-06-11
FARMER AND PLANTER.
THE GREAT AMERICAN HOG.

THE GREAT AMERICAN HOG.
How to Produce the Quality Of Pork Most
In Demand In the Various Mar
kets OF the World.
Paper read by H. F. Work before the Ken
tucky Swine Breeders association, ut Eliza
bethtOwn, April Il, 1898.
This subject is of vast import to every
swine-raiser and is receiving the direct
attention of every live stock journal in
the land. As was the first writer in
the United States to attack the excess
lively fat hog as not conforming to the
consumer in the cvolutions of trade and
methods Of preparing the product, and
have subsequently contributed many
articles to the press on the subject,
garded as summary of former express
sions.
For a number of years hogs of ex-
cessive fat, abounding in lard and
''prime mess" topped the market. The
profits in swine growing while cotton
ruled king of the southland and during
the war of the rebellion were so great
that the hogs were orlScd for all that
was in them, and every effort was di-
rected toward producing excessively
fat animals of immense size. But now
the customs have changed. Sow
belly" has been superseded in the
armies of the world by canned meats,
and bacon and prime mess" have
been almost entirely discarded the
world over. Yea, even the differences
in the price of bacon in the Euro
pean market have been constant for
many years. Owing to the extreme
fatness of our bacon it only brings
from s to IL cents in England, while
the British and Danish product brings
from IL to Il cents. Does it not appeal
to our intelligence as u matter of busi-
ness to change the quality Of our hogs
and have a better quality of bacon,
breed and feed 1.-The hog the market
demands" and get better prices? There
are three prime conditions which we
will have to consider if we reach the
attainment of raising hogs producing
a product most in demand in the mar
kets of the world, namely, breeding,
care and feeding.
In seeking the type of hog produc-
ing the greatest proportion of lean
meat choose as breeders only those of
sufficient bone, sound feet and legs, of
good length, devoid of all excess of
grossness of head, jowl and fabby
belly, with just enough shoulder to
give symmetry to the animal. 1t is
absolutely impossible to produce q
large proportion of lean meat without
the animal has ample bone, sound feet
and legs, with organs of digestion and
respiration uninpaired, thus ensuring
constitutional vigor and muscular ac-
ton. Muscle is lean meat, and the
vigorous, active hog during his en-
tire existence is taking on flesh
of that streaked kind, firm and fine in
texture, with equal facility that his
weak-legged, helpless brother takes on
his punches of iiabby fat. Give your
hogs plenty Of range throughout their
entire existence. Close confinement of
the breeding stock and overfeeding
with rich and highly fermentatious
foods, often consisting of a single corn
diet, Is more largely responsible for the
troubles of the modern swine breeder
than all other causes combined.
The people of every nation are con-
demning pork of excessive fat
ness, which, let us hope, may
be the means of wiping out
many of the denominations oi
modern breeding to produce excessive
ly fat types. 1t will take some time to
get some of the breeds down to bacon
hog, as the bacon hog is the great
desideratum, and we should reach a
conservative point between the lank,
active hog of the pioneer age, which
possessed a vigorous constitution, and
the present condition of his over-bur-
dened descendants.
Now as to care of the hog to produce
the best quality of pork. He should
not be confined to cramped quarters,
but should have access to sunshine and
the pure air of heaven, pure water
and sufficient range to exercise at
will and develop muscle and
take on solid flesh, instead Of
being in confinement and taking on
puffy fat. In the development OF
young swine. green vegetation is not
only luxury but necessity, and they
should be put on pasture in the spring
as soon as it can be had, and fed on
bone and muscle-forming food in con.
nection with light corn ration until
the time for ripening them for market.
Then, in addition to the lighter foods
which should be kept up, increase the
corn ration to the extent of their abil-
ity to digest and assimilate such foods,
avoiding over-feeding yet pushing them
to marketable weight as fast as cir.
cumstances will allow. There was a
time when the hog developed his mus
cles and added largely to the percent
age of lean meat in hunting their own
living, which was composed OF the
masts Of the forests and picked up in
stubble fields where much grain was
left by the scythe and cradle. The
forest has been changed into fertile
fields, and our small grain is SO care
fully cleaned by the self-binders that
those ranges for the swine are thing
of the past, and our hogs, as q con
sequence, have suffered corresponding
ly. While conditions have so radically
changed that we can not cxpec,
to give our hogs the most un-
limited range that they formerly
enjoyed, but we can make them
add TO the per cent. of lean meat in
having them work for part of their liv
ing in the clover fields and bluegrass
pastures. Both clover and bluegrass.
are bone and muscle builders much
relished by the hogs and valuable ad.
iuncts to solid foods. Scores of writers
tell us that there is nothing in the
breed, that it is all in the feed, but II
we were put into possession OF all the
facts we should find these writers were
breeders Of fat types and were ready
to dispose .of their accumulations. II
is useless to argue that you can finish
hog ready for the knife ON light foods
A grass range and all the light
foods, such y milk, middlings, bran
etc, are all right and necessitous
especially for young stock, but K
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