TREATMENT OF PIGS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21244, 27 January 1931, Page 4

TREATMENT OF PIGS.

CARE REQUIRED IN HANDLING. If a sow or boar is bad tempered it is most likely that it has been ill-treated. An unreliable boar is more common than a bad tempei’ed sow, and, although both are entitled to fair treatment, special care is necessary with the boar. Nothing upsets the boar’s peaceable frame of mind more than keeping him too close to gilts or sows when they are in season; he is kept in a constant state of excitement, and when anyone goes near bim he may become angry and dangerous. When he does that the chances are that the person looking after him may think it necessary to use a stick, and that will probably make matters worse. Many boars have their tempers spoiled from the very beginning because their keepers seem to think that their naturally bold spirits are the better for being subdued. They are roughly even as youngsters, and not unnaturally' grow up to become thoroughly bad tempered. There is no need at all for this (states a writer in the Live Stock Journal), and the man that cannot manage a boar without taking a stick to him every i .time is no good as a pig-keeper. I Be firm with a boar, by all means, but r never hit him except in emergency or ■ until you have tried more gentle means of persuasion.

Sows, too, are invariably upset by illtreatment. They resent undue interference, especially at farrowing time or when their youngsters are small. Gilts that are farrowing for the first time should be left alone as much as possible, or they may lose their heads and even kill their pigs. After all a pig has just as much right as any other animal to be treated decently, and far more can usually he done towards keeping it good tempered by kind treatment than by brute force. It is not unusual to find men running pigs who treat the animals more as a nuisance than as a source of profit, and. as might be expected, it is these people who are most persistent and loudest in their complaints concerning the _ inadequacy of the financial returns obtained from pig raising. Pigs are like all other classes of live stock. Only when they are bred with due consideration for the purpose for which they are used and fed in a rational manner can they be expected to give satisfactory results. To let them look after themselves is deliberately to court disappointment. A pig requires only half as much food to produce lib of pork as a steer does to gain lib in weight, and only two-thirds as much food to yield lib of pork as is necessary for a sheep to produce 11b of mutton. Cows drop one calf annually, a sheep may_have two lambs; but a sow' in 12 months can farrow two litters, varying from 8 to 12, or even more.