dicine which a pig needs,--a mixture of ashes,
charcoal, salt, and sulphur.

When he has spent 250 happy days with me, we part company with feelings
of mutual respect,--he to finish his mission, I to provide for his
successor.

My early plan was to turn off 200 of this finished product each year,
but I soon found that I could do much better. One can raise a crop of
hogs nearly as quickly as a crop of corn, and with much more profit, if
the food be at hand. There was likely to be an abundance of food. I was
more willing to sell it in pig skins than in any other packages. My plan
was now to turn off, not 200 hogs each year, but 600 or more. I had 60
well-bred sows, young and old, and I could count on them to farrow at
least three times in two years. The litters ought to average 7 each, say
22 pigs in two years; 60 times 22 are 1320, and half of 1320 is 660.
Yes, at that rate, I could count on about 600 finished hogs to sell each
year. But if my calculations were too high, I could easily keep 10 more
brood sows, for I had sufficient room to keep them healthy.

The two five-acre lots, Nos. 3 and 5, had been given over to the brood
sows when they were not caring for young litters in the brood-house.
Comfortable shelters and a cemented basin twelve feet by twelve, and one
foot deep, had been built in each lot. The water-pipe that ran through
the chicken lot (No. 4) connected with these basins, as did also a
drain-pipe to the drain in the north lane, so that it was easy to turn
on fresh water and to draw off that which was soiled. Through this
device my brood sows had access to a water bath eight inches deep,
whenever they were in the fields. My hogs, young or old, have never been
permitted to wallow in mud. We have no mud-holes at Four Oaks to grow
stale and breed disease. The breeding hogs have exercise lots and baths,
but the young growing and fattening stock have neither. They are kept in
runs twenty feet by one hundred, in bunches of from twenty to forty,
according to age, from the time they are weaned until they leave the
place for good. This plan, which I did not intend to change, opened a
question in my mind that gave me pause. It was this: Can I hope, even
with the utmost care, to keep the house for growing and fattening swine
free from disease if I keep it constantly full of swine?

The more I thought about it the less probable it appeared. The pig-house
had cost me $4320. Another would cost as much, if not more,