NOTES FOR FARMERS.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12546, 24 May 1909, Page 4

NOTES FOR FARMERS.

PIGGS FOR SMALL FARMS. - There* is advantage about pigs that, makes them emphatically the stock -for the poor man or the sniall farmer, and that is the very quick returns .which they afford by the rapidity with which they increase and pome. to maturity, says a writer in an exchange. . A. good brood sow, given' igood treatment, so ■■ as to be kept in a thrifty condition, will farrow two litters of pigs in a year, that will run from seven to eight <pigs in each litter ; and if proper feed and: care is given, these may be ready for market by the time' they are eight or nine months old at the farthest. No other .stock kept on ihe 'farm will make so good a "return in so short a time. Sheep will come nearest to jt, but in the same length of time a pig will make double the weight of a lamb. ' Another advantage with pigs is that ■they are marketable from the time they- are farrowed until they are fatteiied for market. A sow with a litter of- pigs and growing pigs, three four,' 'or five months old, will always sell, at full market prices ; so that the 1 farmer.^ hot obliged to feed them to maturity to get a little money out of them. ' When it is considered -that they, utilise much on the farm- that would otherwise go to waste, it is only in exceptional cases that a few cannot be kept.on'a farm with profit.