Care of Young Pigs.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2090, 31 January 1896, Page 4

Care of Young Pigs.

Great care is required in managing the young pig. The following advice given in a contemporary may prove interesting:—Ordinarily, until the pigs are six to eight months old, there should be no other thought in connection with them than how to make them grow. Any surplus fat at this time is in the way. The pig needs that kind of feed that will develop bone and muscle, giving size and a robust constitution. These things are never accomplished by the farmer who grows enthusiastic by spurts. Regular and even development is always Nature's way, and her way should be our law.

For the first few weeks of the pig's life it is to be fed wholly through the dam, and it must always be rigidly, borne in mind by the feeder that when he is feeding the dam he is feeding the pigs. It is very often a thoughtless indifference upon this point that is the cause of one of the most vexatious troubles with young pigs. Scours is not considered a very dangerous ailment, but it is a much more costly thing to the farmer than all the other ailments combined, as it goes through the litter. The trouble does not arise perhaps from getting too strong a flow of milk over an extended period of time, but rather from too much at one time and too little at another, caused by spurts in feeding or by sudden changes in the character of the milk caused by feeding the wrong thing. However, the worst phase of the matter is not simply, that the pigs are afflicted with a disorder somewhat difficult to cure, but that it stunts growth permanently. The pig that has the scours never will make the animal that it might have made had it escaped the trouble. The fact may as well be set down as settled. Hence the man who would make the most on his pigs must avoid scours. This he can do only by properly feeding tbe dam while the pigs are young. ■