COAL FOR PIGS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2934, 8 June 1910, Page 20

COAL FOR PIGS.

"Pateley Bridge," the veterinary expert of Farm and Home, says:—" Small coal or slack does not suggest itself as a likely material to aid digestion in the pig, but there is no doubt about"its being an aid to digestion, and its usefulness for this purpose ought to be more widely known. Many years .ago we heard a story of an old lady, locally renowned for the thrifty character of her pigs, who declared that she fed them on coal, and having related this to a farmer's wife who keeps pigs for pocket money and the utilisation of her dairy waste, she also became a coal-feeder. And her pigs, which used frequently to cause trouble on account of indigestion and 'fits,' are now regularly supplied with coal slack, which is thrown into a corner of their sty, and to which they resort at their own sweet will, without other than benefit. As you remark, 'it is marvellous the quantity they eat.' There are some who have attributed to small coal a feeding value, so markedly have pigs thriven when supplied with it, but this is an absurd notion, and this cheap and handy material can only b© looked upon as an aid to digestion (like the grit taken by chickens), which enables the nutritious principles to be thoroughly extracted from the food supplied, and the pigs to get all the 'goodness' out of it. For young pigs ; recently weaned, and predisposed to 'fits,' because their uneducated stomachs are not capable of dealing with the food supplied to them, a shovelful of coal slack—not cinders, which some apjDear to think will do as well—thrown into the corner of th* pen, at which they can munch at will, is most useful, and it is astonishing how soon the heap disappears, on account of their frequent visits to it. For older pigs, and breeding animals that are not 'doing' well (the pigs that eat their bedding and suck up the filth accumulating in holes in the floor, or between the bricks of a defective pavement, generally on account of some digestive disorder),' some small coal and a. few lumps of wood charcoal often produce an improvement which a resort to medicinal agents has failed to effect. Charcoal, prepared in a toothsome form in the Shape of biscuits, or given in powder form in water, is accounted excellent for the human dyspeptic, and the rougher form seems not less beneficial for the dyspeptic pig-"