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Harris on the Pig; Breeding, Rearing, Management, and Improvement
Harris on the Pig Breeding Rearing Management and Improvement Author:Joseph Harris General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1870 Original Publisher: Orange Judd Company Subjects: Swine Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Bo... more »oks.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: PREFACE. Paradoxical as it may seem, in writing a book on Pigs and in endeavoring to show that we can obtain more meat from a well-bred pig, in proportion to the food consumed, than from any other domestic animal, it is no part of my object to stimulate the production of pork. For over twenty years I have had the honor to be connected with the Agricultural Press of America, and have had my thoughts constantly directed to the means necessary to improve our general system of farming. A farmer's son, and myself a farmer, all my sympathies are with the farming class rather than with the 'consumers; but I am satisfied that, in many respects, our interests are identical. It should be our study to furnish good food at reasonable rates. At the present time the consumers in our large cities are obliged to pay much more for flesh-meat than it is intrinsically worth; and, on the other hand, with the exception of those who produce beef and mutton of the best quality, farmers make nothing by raising and feeding cattle and sheep. We receive more for our meat than it is worth, and yet it costs us more than we get for it. The remedy for this unsatisfactory condition of affairs, will be found in cultivating our land more thoroughly, in growing better grass, in keeping better stock and in liberal feeding. The introduction of better breeds of pigs will in itself do little towards improving our farms; but the farmer who once uses a thorough-bred boar and adopts a liberal system of feeding, will find that he can produce better pork at a far less cost than when he ...« less