Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1869 — Hog Pens. [ARTICLE]

Hog Pens.

Every farmer knows how offensive a common sized hog-pen or yard becomes during the hot weather of summer, and how during a rainy time it becomes in fact a swamp of mud. To remedy this, those who have abundance, fill up with straw or other litter, ashes, <fcc., and yet the remedy is only partial; the smell is not disposed of, and the animals are full half the time wading in mire. The following manner of building’a pen we have known to remedy the evil 'completely : Take two pieces of six by eight timber each fourteen feet long; dress one end of each in form of a sled runner, then lay them parallel eight feet apart, with the six inch edge on the ground; now take four by four scantling and halve or tenant in crosswise one piece at each end, and one foot from the ends of the runners, leaving the four inch strips one and one-half inches below the level line of the upper side of the runners; next lay a floor of one and one-half inch plank oyer one-half tiie surface, say eight by six feet. Next mortice in four by four scantling at each corner and midways for posts on which to nail boards for the enclosing. Let these four by four posts be flush with the outside line of the runners; then nail incli boards on the inside, dividing the whole with a cross-fence or partition on a’ line of the floor. Roof over the floored part, from the trough across one end or side of the floored part, and with a side door shut your hogs in or out of that part—and your pen is completed. Now you ask where is the benefit of this pen over any common one with posts set in the ground? AVe answer, you can hitch a team to it and remove it to any part of your grounds, placing it from time to time where most convenient to feed, etc., besides enriching various spots of ground and having a dry piece and fresh ground to work in. —Ohio Farmer.