IS THE PIG A FILTHY ANIMAL?

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2580, 14 July 1882, Page 3

IS THE PIG A FILTHY ANIMAL?

f“ Lire Stock Journal."J

The Kttle animal that leads all our exports of animal products, and is likely to hold this lead for years to come, should not be charged with faults that belong primarily to his keepers. The pig is called the filthiest of our domestic animals, but this is mads inseparable from hie surroundings in most oases. The pig is a wonderful machine for the production of pork, bacon, and hams. He is the greatest utilizer of food on the farm. He lays up In bia body 20 per cent, of the dry substance of hia food —a feat not performed by any other of our domestic animals—and proper provision should be made for the disposal of hia excretion. The tidy dairyman cleans bis oow stable every day, and some twice per day j but his nig pen ia not cleansed till bia pigs are likely to be submerged. Aro the pigs or the owner chargeable with the filth ? Same .Tears ago wa tested the pig’s disposition to keep clean where the opportunity was given, by placing in hia pasture a shallow bath of clean water. This privilege was eagerly used, in preference to wallowing in a mud hole some few rods off. This shallow bath was filled with freih water throe times per week, and it was noticed that the pigs seemed always to enjoy the renewal of the water. This certainly indicated a nice discrimination ia cleanly habits. The writer has also plac’d pigs upon a slatted floor, which would allow the liquid and much of the solid to go through, and the balance was mostly trodden through. Ob one tide of the pen was a strip of tight floor, four feet wide, with the trough placed upon it against tbs side of the pen, and upon these plankei was placed bedding for the pigs. They soon learned the use of the slatted part of the pen, and would go there and drop. The slatted floor is elevated 15in above the bottom, so that the excretion works through the slats, and the pen and pigs are kept clean. A door is hung on a hinge, so as to be turned up and allow the manure to be cleaned from under the slatted part of the floor. The pig, in this case, keeps quite clean, without any labor being bestowed upon it, except to remove the manure, once a month, from under the slatted floor.

The writer has found pigs just es ready to keep clean as any other animal when the opportunity is afforded them to do so. Let the farmer take the same pain to keep him clean as he does in the case of other domestic animals, and he will find the pig as cleanly as any of them. The pig is a very profitable animal, and when we consider that it returns us from exportations about 110,000,000301. per year, a sum greater than all other animal exports, it would seem that it deserves to be treated with as much consideration as we give to our cows and horses.