Pig Raising: A Manual for Pig ClubsNolan, Aretas Wilbur
Science
Pig Raising: A Manual for Pig Clubs
Nolan, Aretas Wilbur
Swine
=Houses.= Hogs must be housed in dry, warm, clean, and well-ventilated
houses. Sunshine is a very important agent in disinfecting and warming
the hog house. The well-established breeder may have a colony house, but
for the beginner the individual house of the A or square type is to be
recommended.
During the summer a good pasture will provide cheap, clean feed,
exercise and a clean bed. It may be necessary, however, to provide a
shelter from the direct rays of the sun. This may be furnished by a frame
of poles covered with straw or corn stalks.
=Sanitation.= It is much easier to keep a pig healthy than it is to cure
him after he becomes sick. Cleanliness, proper feed, disinfection of
houses and animals, together with plenty of sunlight, ventilation and
dryness of quarters, will help to keep a pig in good health.
If care is taken that there are no unnecessary cracks or corners in which
filth may accumulate, it will be easy to keep houses, troughs and feeding
floors sanitary. A good disinfectant should be used regularly in the
pens. Five parts of crude carbolic acid in one hundred parts of water
is recommended. All filth should be removed before the disinfectant is
applied. Once a year all buildings should be whitewashed. A pint of crude
carbolic acid should be added to each three gallons of whitewash.
Feed lots and pastures cannot be disinfected in this fashion, but
applications of lime and an occasional plowing will help.
=Hog wallows and dips.= The pig is not naturally a filthy animal, and if
given an opportunity will keep fairly clean. During the extreme heat of
summer the pig suffers, owing to the fact that he perspires but little.
He seeks the shelter of a cool mud wallow to get relief from heat and
parasites. The intelligent hog raiser will provide a concrete wallow and
keep it filled with eight or ten inches of water. Coal-tar or crude oil
added to the water helps to rid the animal of lice. Where the animals are
badly infested with lice it will be necessary to wet them all over, as
the lice are found behind the ears, inside of the legs and in the folds
of the skin. A two per cent solution of creolin may be used for this
purpose.
=Worms.= Pigs are often affected with worms which interfere with their
thriftiness. A tablespoonful of castor oil and forty drops of oil of
American wormseed should be given in the slop to wormy pigs. Six grains
of santonin and four grains of calomel per 100 pound pig is also used
successfully.
=Hog cholera.= It is not possible within the scope of a small book to
describe all of the diseases that attack pigs. Every pig club member,
however, should know something about hog cholera, the greatest scourge
which attacks swine.
The germs of hog cholera may be carried on the boots of visitors, by
pigeons or dogs. It can only be combatted by vaccination of healthy hogs,
quarantining of all sick hogs, burning of all dead hogs and disinfection
of premises.
Three methods of vaccination are in use:
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