Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1875 — Feeding Swine in Summer. [ARTICLE]

Feeding Swine in Summer.

A correspondent of the Germantown Teleyiaph writes: “ Dfiringthe hot summer months 1 would feed very little solid feed, such as corn in the ear or uncracked. 1 would keep hogs upon green feed constantly, either grass, oats or rjje, and feed them at regular intervals, once or tw ice a day, upon mashed feed, either shorts, chopped oats or rye, buckwheat, etc., fed in troughs. When fed in this way, and at the same time allowed access to water and shade, hogs will bear crowding through the hot months, a very good time, if not the best, to take on flesh. This puts them in the best of condition for corn feeding, which should commence about the Ist of September, when the new crop is still soft and tender.” This w riter is on the eve of findingout that the hog requires bulky food as well jas the cow or horse. Because pork is | usually made by feeding grain, many farmers have almost ceased to regard the hog as a grass-eating animal. When farmers shall study jhe nature of the pig and feed it accordingly there Will be little trouble with cholera, scurvy or other diseases. Both are no doubt occasioned by errors in feeding and uncleanly surroundings. One point mentioned in the above paragraph needs correction, and that is, that it is danger ous to feed high in summer. This idea has grown out of the, fact that diseases are more prevalent in warm weather; but the cause of greater prevalence of disease is that concentrated food creates fever in the stomach, and the iiotl weather increases the diftieulty.. Gold weather carries off much of the unnat--ural heat, and modifies t in: (.fleet of grain diet alone. Now the pig should be fed in such a way that the stomach will be healthy at all times, and then the summer heat wilt aid the growth and laying on of fat. With grass or other green food, given with meal, the pig may be fattened much cheaper in summer than fall or winter; it requiring little food to keep up animal heat. The summer is the economical time to make pork; give plenty of clover, green rye, oats, turnips, beets, carrots or other green food relished by the pig, and with this give corn meal, ground oats, peas or any other graimnnd your pigs will make healthy porkphvnd the pork cost 50 per cent, less than that made in winter. — Stock Journal. - _e ' , .