POISONING PIGS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 124, 16 August 1927, Page 8

POISONING PIGS

Sir, — I saw recently in the Press a complaint by sheep farmers about the wild pigs destroying their lambs. Here is a remedy—cheap, and never-failing—-and as the lambing season is close at hand it may help them. When I lived in the Islands, one of the traders had to rent a house from a native to store his surplus copra, his own sheds being full. These houses are built similar to our Maori dwellings. The walls are of raupo. When this house was full, and the droppings of the weigh-ing-in process ceased, the pigs belonging to the natives undermined and broke the raupo walls, and helped themselves liberally to the trader's copra. The trader could not get any redress from either the natives or the magistrate, so he adopted this plan: He took fairly large kumeras, and boiled them till they were soft. When still scalding hot he inserted a piece of phosphorus of about an inch long, and filled the hole up. By the time the kumera was cold the phosphorus was dissolved. These kumeras he put liberally round the hired kumera shed. Next morning there was a number of dead pigs lying about. After that, the natives kept their pigs from the white man's copra, but they never allowed any other of their houses to be used as a copra shed. Phosphorus is cheap, and obtainable from chemist or druggist. It is also useful to people plagued by ants, roaches, mice, or rats. Dissolve half a candle in about half a gallon of soft paste, w r ith some fat in it. Put this paste on bits of glass or tin, and put it in their haunts. The pests will soon disappear. To destroy wild pigs with poison, strychnine is too bitter; they shy clear of it. Arsenic is too expensive, and a pig can take with impunity a dose which would kill half a dozen men: but phosphorus is just the thing—cheap and effective. . m , O.W.S. Auckland.