Piggery.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 999, 24 April 1891, Page 25

Piggery.

PIG BREEDING. (By Mr Sanders Spencer in Canadian Live Stock Journal.) The only cause for hesitation in accepting your invitation to write a series of short articles on pigs was the fear that I might be compelled to mention my own herd and practises so much that ill-natured people might assert that my main object was to advertise my herd or myself. My reply to that innuendo would be. that neither my herd nor myself require it. My herd is well known, and I am no novice in writing on questions relating to pigs; nor is my name unknown as one who has written on pigs. With this short introduction I will proceed to consider the choice and care of boars. One of our most successful breeders of cattle is reported to have asserted that a good bull was half a herd. This, is undoubtedly true, and it applies with equal force to the boar as to the bull. I have known some boars so impressive that it mattered little what sows were put to

them, the greater portion of the produce were bound to be good, and I am sorry to say that the reverse holds equally true—a good-looking boar may have had in some one or other of its ancestors a bad trait, or may be across : this is bound to show itself in some of its produce from certain sows, these latter doubtless having a tendency in their form or breeding to these weak points. This being the case it behoves every breeder of pigs to pay particular attention to the choice of a boar to head their herd. Tho place to seek it is a herd which has for a length of time been carefully bred up to those points which the buyer is seeking to perpetuate in his herd. Years ago I was silly enough to buy more than one very fine boar from, a newly formed herd where the breeding stock had been picked up at various places. The boars themselves were very fine specimens of their breed, but their produce, even in one litter of pigs wei-e very various—some of one type and some of anothera few good, but many very mixed and inferior. Nor would I trus r t entirely to an animal having been a successful prize-winner at shows, where it is not incumbent on the owners to prove that the animal shown was a truebred one of its variety. For instance, several years since I purchased a boar which had made for years a successful i-ecord at the pi-incipal shows. I used him to a few of my best sows, and was surprised to fifl.d that some of his produce came parti-coloured. I then made inquiries, and discovered that there Avas some doubt as to bis pui'ity of breeding, and of the pedigi’ee given Avith him. Had I taken the trouble to make these inquiries earliei' or have bought a stock boar fi'om an old-established herd time would have been saved, annoyance avoided, and loss unsustained, as I was obliged to have the whole of the produce of this boar operated on. The seller of the boar stated that the excuse made foi* this boar Avas that he had been used to black sows, aixd that this Avas the cause of the few black and Avhite pigs. It may have been so, as it is a Avell-known fact that if a purebi'ed Avhite boar is mated Avith coloured sows and then very shortly afterwards ixsed to purebred white sows, some of the latter are very likely to come particoloured. I have known instances of this, and a most annoying one of the kind occurred quite recently in the herd of a friend Avho keeps purebred Yorkshires and Northamptonshire black and Avhite or spotted pigs. The stupid old foreman, or someone else, no doubt allowed the pedigree Yorkshire boar to have access to one of the spotted sows, and then very shortly after the boar was mated Avith a purebred white sow. The expected happened, the litter of pigs were move like ci-oss-breds. This using of purebred boars for crossing pin-poses must be avoided where colour of the offspring is of importance. I am aAvare that some pex-sons ai*e of opinion that the result is not as pointed out. It is not ahvays so, but it will happen often enough to create a considei-able amount of loss and annoyance, the Avhole of Avhich may be avoided by mating purebred boars only to sows of the same variety.