The New Hampshire Gazette And Historical Chronicle

How to fatten Hogs and Horses.

From Mr. Elliot's Essays on Field Husbandry.

I find, by Experience, the best Time to fatten Swine is to begin the First of August, if you have old Corn. Hogs will fat slowly in very cold Weather; they will eat much and fatten but little. If you make a very warm House, they sweat in Bed and take Cold when they come out into the cold Air.

To save Corn; steep it in water or swill till the corn grows very soft; this opens the parts. Give them the corn to eat and the water to drink in which the corn has been steeped. The hard dry corn, a great deal of it, passeth through them undigested; this is the hardest part of the corn, and that which principally makes the flour.

There is a tradition, that if you feed one hog rich corn, the dung of the first hog will fat another hog, and his dung a third. Altho' I believe the story to be fabulous, yet it serves to show that the sense of mankind is, that in the manner we feed Swine, there is a great loss.

I took the hint of steeping corn, from the Advantage I once found by some corn I bought that had been ship wreck'd, had lain in the water till it was grown soft. Such is the difference in corn and swine, that it is impossible to fix it absolutely and know certainly how much there is saved by this method. It is better than grinding besides that we save in the toll and the time and charge of the carriage; for it is found by experience that even bran when steeped in water a long time, is much better.

I asked an honest judicious neighbour of mine, who had leisure to try this method of steeping Corn longer and with more exactness than I had done, How much he thought was saved by it? He said, At least one bushel in seven; he believed more. But we still suppose it save but a tenth part; then see how much it will save in the whole colony. Suppose there are in Connecticut about 60 Towns, great and small, new and old. We will suppose two hundred families in such town, one with another, and each family to consume or spend as much pork as will require one with another, twenty bushels of corn to make the pork for each family. Sixty towns of two hundred families, each, makes twelve thousand families, and twenty bushels of corn to each family, makes two hundred forty thousand bushels; the tenth part of this is twenty four thousand bushels. If there be not so many towns and families as is supposed, there is much pork fatted and sent away in barrels, and many herds of fat swine drove away that are not consumed in the government, enough to make it up. And surely the saving twenty four thousand bushels of corn yearly, is worthy of our care and consideration.

HORSES.

Since the foregoing was written, a person of good credit informed me, that there being in his neighbourhood a dealer in Horses, who was famous for skill in making horses fat in a short time; he desired the Jockey to tell him how he did it. The Secret was to mix Indian Corn and Oats together and soak it in water till it was soft, and in cold weather he steeped it in a cellar, that it might be kept from freezing. My informer told me he had made trial of it, and found it did well, giving it to his horse in the same proportion as he was wont to do of dry provender.