Farm and Garden.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 440, 18 August 1904, Page 7

Farm and Garden.

ORIGINAL ARTICLES. " PREPARING HOGS FOR MARKET, SELECT the pig your market demands, leaving entirely out of the question personal fancies and prejudices. If the highest value in the dressed animal is because it possesses a large lean ham, take the Berkshire because that is the feature of the breed, and probably there is no better pasture hog m existence. If the value of the animal depends upon the very highest quality of both cured ham and bacon known to the trade, then the Yorkshire stands preeminent. However, select the breed that will return you the most money, and make no mistake in your selection. Havin« settled that matter, then attention may be given to the method of rearing. It is considered best to keep the pig growing and gaining in flesh from the time of birth until he be ready for market. That docs not mean that the pig should have the highest concentrated food possible the first four or five months. But some of the great variety of healthful odds and ends arc to bo found on any farm, and often in the market places, at a nominal cost, combined with a good quality of boarding-house swill, good sweet, ground beef scrap in limited quantity, wheat, bran, and pollard, and, last but not least by any means—for it should stand first on the list—skimmed milk, mixed into the entire mass after the whole has been well cooked. Exception should be made in the boarding-house swill by simply adding hot water before feeding. Accustom them to cat a few kernels of corn as soon as they will. The habit will bo valuable later on; also whsre available the pigs should have good clover pasture, and good clean water to drink, and a little fringe of wood to run through on the edge of the pasture, and a shelter shed bedded with fine white sand or sawdust to run under in the event of stormy weather. Supposing under these conditions one starts with fifty good pigs, all about the same make-up: Peed them twice a day on the cheap mixture of swill till five months old, when they may be shifted to the feed that produces the finest quality of meat. EGG PRODUCTION. It must be poor kind of farming not to realise that crops cannot bo taken from the fields, year after year, without returning anything to ,the soil, and which must eventually so impoverish the land, that the yield will gradually decrease and bring the proprietor to ruin; and so likewise some poultry keepers have not yet fully realised that the same principle holds good in regard to poultry. If hens are expected to lay eggs they must have something to work with; they must obtain egg forming elements from some source or other. In recent years the practical poultry keeper has been able to double the amount of his egg production, especially during the winter period by a careful study of egg producing foods. Prominent among these must be placed g-reen cut bones—a food that is easily and cheaply obtained, and is undoubtedly the greatest egg producer ever fed to hens. The bones, when finely cut while still green, supply that element of food so much needed and relished by fowls, more than taking the place of the bugs and worms which the hens devour so greatly when roaming over the fields. Moreover, the bone supplies the mineral matter so greatly needed for egg formation, as phosphates and lime, and is in short an ideal egg food. When it is considered how cheaply the bones can be procured, and how little trouble it is to prepare them in suitable condition for the fowls to eat, it is difficult to understand why any poultry keeper neglects their use." If it is from not having sufficient time to devote to such a matter, then it may be cheaply obtained at the present time from almost any or every produce dealer.