Sheep, Swine, and Poultry Part 18

In this process there are five stages: the _saccharine_, by which the starch and gum of the vegetables, in their natural condition, are converted into sugar; the _vinous_, which changes the sugar into alcohol; the _mucilaginous_, sometimes taking the place of the vinous, and occurring where the sugar solution, or fermenting principle, is weak, producing a slimy, glutinous product; the _acetic_, forming vinegar, from the vinous or alcoholic stage; and the _putrefactive_, which destroys all the nutritive principles and converts them into a poison. The precise points in fermentation, when the food becomes most profitable for feeding, has not as yet been satisfactorily determined; but that it should stop short of the putrefactive, and probably the full maturity of the acetic, is certain.

The roots for fattening ought to be washed, and steamed or boiled; and when not intended to be fermented, the meal may be scalded with the roots. A small quant.i.ty of salt should be added. Potatoes are the best roots for swine; then parsnips; orange or red carrots, white or Belgian; sugar-beets; mangel-wurtzels; ruta-bagas; and then white turnips, in the order mentioned. The nutritive properties of turnips are diffused through so large a bulk that it is doubtful if they can ever be fed to fattening swine with advantage; and they will barely sustain life when fed to them uncooked.

There is a great loss in feeding roots to fattening swine, without cooking. When unprepared grain is fed, it should be on a full stomach, to prevent imperfect mastication, and consequent loss of the food. It is better, indeed, to have it always before them. The animal machine is an expensive one to keep in motion; and it should be the object of the farmer to put his food in the most available condition for its immediate conversion into fat and muscle.

The following injunctions should be rigidly observed, if one would secure the greatest results:

1. Avoid _foul feeding_.

2. Do not omit adding _salt_ in moderate quant.i.ties to the mess given.

3. Feed at _regular intervals_.

4. _Cleanse_ the troughs previous to feeding.

5. Do not _over-feed_; give only as much as will be consumed at the meal.

6. _Vary_ the food. Variety will create, or, at all events, increase appet.i.te, and it is most conducive to health. Let the variations be governed by the condition of the _dung_ cast, which should be of a medium consistence, and of a grayish-brown color; if _hard_, increase the quant.i.ty of bran and succulent roots; if too _liquid_, diminish, or dispense with bran, and make the mess firmer; add a portion of corn.

7. Feed the stock _separately_, in cla.s.ses, according to their relative conditions. Keep sows with young by themselves; store-hogs by themselves; and bacon-hogs and porkers by themselves. It is not advisable to keep the store-hogs too high in flesh, since high feeding is calculated to r.e.t.a.r.d development of form and bulk. It is better to feed pigs intended to be put up for bacon _loosely_ and not too abundantly, until they have attained their full stature; they can then be brought into the highest possible condition in a surprisingly short s.p.a.ce of time.

8. Keep the swine _clean_, dry, and warm. Cleanliness, dryness, and warmth are _essential_, and as imperative as feeding; for an inferior description of food will, by their aid, succeed far better than the highest feeding will without them.

PIGGERIES.

Few items conduce more to the thriving and well-being of swine than airy, s.p.a.cious, well-constructed styes, and above all, cleanliness.

They were formerly too often housed in damp, dirty, close, and imperfectly-built sheds, which was a fruitful source of disease and of unthrifty animals. Any place was once thought good enough to keep a pig in.

In large establishments, where numerous pigs are kept, there should be divisions appropriated to all the different kinds; the boars, the breeding sows, the newly weaned, and the fattening pigs should all be kept separate; and in the divisions a.s.signed to the second and last of these cla.s.ses, it is best to have a distinct apartment for each animal, all opening into a yard or inclosure of limited extent. As pigs require warmth, these buildings should face the south, and be kept weather-tight and well drained. Good ventilation is also important; for it is idle to expect animals to make good flesh and retain their health, unless they have a sufficiency of pure air. The blood requires this to give it vitality and free it from impurities, as much as the stomach requires wholesome and strengthening food; and when it does not have it, it becomes vitiated, and impairs all the animal functions. Bad smells and exhalations, moreover, injure the flavor of the meat.

Damp and cold floors should be guarded against, as they tend to induce cramp and diarrh[oe]a; and the roof should be so contrived as to carry off the wet from the pigs. The walls of a well-constructed sty should be of solid masonry; the roof sloping, and furnished with spouts to carry off the rain; the floors either slightly inclined toward a gutter made to carry off the rain, or else raised from the ground on beams or joists, and perforated so that all urine and moisture shall drain off.

Bricks and tiles, sometimes used for flooring, are objectionable, because, however well covered with straw, they still strike cold. Wood is far superior in this respect, as well as because it admits of those clefts or perforations being made, which serve not only to drain off all moisture, but also to admit fresh air.

The manure proceeding from the pig-sty has often been much undervalued, and for this reason, that the litter is supposed to form the princ.i.p.al portion of it; whereas it const.i.tutes the least valuable part, and, indeed, it can scarcely be regarded as manure at all--at least by itself--where the requisite attention is paid to the cleanliness of the animals and of their dwellings. The urine and the dung are valuable, being, from the very nature of the food of the animals, exceedingly rich and oleaginous, and materially beneficial to cold soils and gra.s.s-lands.

The manure from the sty should always be collected as carefully as that from the stable or cow-house, and husbanded in the same way.

The door of each sty ought to be so hung that it will open inward or outward, so as to give the animals free ingress and egress. For this purpose, it should be hung across from side to side, and the animal can push it up to effect its entry or exit; for, if it were hung in the ordinary way, it would derange the litter every time it opened inward, and be very liable to hitch. If it is not intended that the pigs shall leave their sty, there should be an upper and lower door; the former of which should always be left open when the weather is warm and dry, while the latter will serve to confine the animal. There should likewise be windows or slides, which can be opened or closed at will, to give admission to the fresh air, or exclude rain or cold.

Wherever it can be managed, the troughs--which should be of stone or cast metal, since wooden ones will soon be gnawed to pieces--should be so situated that they can be filled and cleaned from the outside, without interfering with or disturbing the animals at all; and for this purpose it is well to have a flap, or door, with swinging hinges, made to hang horizontally on the trough, so that it can be moved to and fro, and alternately be fastened by a bolt to the inside or outside of the manger. When the hogs have fed sufficiently, the door is swung inward and fastened, and so remains until feeding-time, when the trough is cleansed and refilled without any trouble, and then the flap drawn back, and the animals admitted to their food. Some cover the trough with a lid having as many holes in it as there are pigs to eat from it, which gives each pig an opportunity of selecting his own hole, and eating away without interfering with or incommoding his neighbor.

A hog ought to have three apartments, one each for sleeping, eating, and evacuations; of which the last may occupy the lowest, and the first the highest level, so that nothing shall be drained, and as little carried into the first two as possible. The piggery should always be built as near as possible to that portion of the establishment from which the chief part of the provision is to come, since much labor will thus be saved. Washings, and combings, and brushings, as has been previously suggested, are valuable adjuncts in the treatment of swine; the energies of the skin are thus roused, the pores opened, the healthful functions aided, and that inertness, so likely to be engendered by the lazy life of a fattening pig, counteracted.

A supply of fresh water is essential to the well-being of swine, and should be freely furnished. If a stream can be brought through the piggery, it answers better than any thing else. Swine are dirty feeders and dirty drinkers, usually plunging their fore-feet into the trough or pail, and thus polluting with mud or dirt whatever may be given to them.

One of the advantages, therefore, to be derived from the stream of running water is, its being kept constantly clean and wholesome by its running. If this advantage cannot be procured, it is desirable to present water in vessels of a size to receive but one head at a time, and of such height as to render it impossible, or difficult, for the drinker to get his feet into it. The water should be renewed twice daily. If swine are closely confined in pens, they should have as much charcoal twice a week as they will eat, for the purpose of correcting any tendency to disorders of the stomach. Rotten wood is an imperfect subst.i.tute for charcoal.

SLAUGHTERING.

A pig that is to be killed should be kept without food for from twelve to sixteen hours previous to slaughtering; a little water must, however, be within his reach. He should, in the first place, be stunned by a blow on the head. Some advise that the knife should be thrust into the neck so as to sever the artery leading from the heart; while others prefer that the animal should be stuck through the brisket in the direction of the heart--care being exercised not to touch the first rib. The blood should then be allowed to drain from the carca.s.s into vessels placed for the purpose; and the more completely it does so, the better will be the meat.

A large tub, or other vessel, has been previously got ready, which is now filled with boiling water. The carca.s.s of the hog is plunged into this, and the hair is then removed with the edge of a knife. The hair is more easily removed if the hog is scalded before he stiffens, or becomes quite cold. It is not, however, necessary, but simply brutal and barbarous, to scald him while there is yet some life in him. Bacon-hogs may be singed, by enveloping the body in straw, and setting the straw on fire, and then sc.r.a.ping it all over. When this is done, care must be observed not to burn or parch the cuticle. The entrails should then be removed, and the interior of the body well washed with lukewarm water, so as to remove all blood and impurities, and afterward wiped dry with a clean cloth; the carca.s.s should then be hung up in a cool place for eighteen or twenty hours, to become set and firm.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OLD ENGLISH HOG.]

For cutting up, the carca.s.s should be laid on the back, upon a strong table. The head should then be cut off close by the ears, and the hinder feet so far below the houghs as not to disfigure the hams, and leave room sufficient for hanging them up; after which the carca.s.s is divided into equal halves, up the middle of the back bone, with a cleaving-knife, and, if necessary, a hand-mallet. Then cut the ham from the side by the second joint of the back-bone, which will appear on dividing the carca.s.s, and dress the ham by paring a little off the flank, or skinny part, so as to shape it with a half round point, clearing off any top fat which may appear. Next cut off the sharp edge along the back bone with a knife and mallet, and slice off the first rib next the shoulder, where there is a b.l.o.o.d.y vein, which must be taken out, since, if it is left in, that part is apt to spoil. The corners should be squared off when the ham is cut. The ordinary practice is to cut out the spine, or back bone. Some take out the chine and upper parts of the ribs in the first place; indeed, almost every locality has its peculiar mode of proceeding.

PICKLING AND CURING.

The usual method of curing is to pack the pork in clean salt, adding brine to the barrel when filled. But it may be dry-salted, by rubbing it in thoroughly on every side of each piece, with a strong leather rubber firmly secured to the palm of the right hand. The pieces are then thrown into heaps and sprinkled with salt, and occasionally turned till cured; or it may at once be packed in dry casks, which are rolled at times to bring the salt into contact with every part.

Hams and shoulders may be cured in the same manner either dry or in pickle, but with differently arranged materials. The following is a good pickle for two hundred pounds: Take fourteen pounds of Turk's Island salt; one-half pound of saltpetre; two quarts of mola.s.ses, or four pounds of brown sugar; with water enough to dissolve them. Bring the liquor to the scalding-point, and skim off all the impurities which rise to the top. When cold, pour it upon the ham, which should be perfectly cool, but not frozen, and closely packed; if not sufficient to cover it, add pure water for this purpose. Some extensive packers of choice hams add pepper, allspice, cinnamon, nutmegs, or mace and cloves.

The hams may remain six or eight weeks in this pickle, then should be hung up in the smoke-house, with the small end down, and smoked from ten to twenty days, according to the quant.i.ty of smoke. The fire should not be near enough to heat the hams. In Holland and Westphalia, the fire is made in the cellar, and the smoke carried by a flue into a cool, dry chamber. This is, undoubtedly, the best mode of smoking. The hams should at all times be dry and cool, or their flavor will suffer. Green sugar-maple chips are best for smoke; next to them are hickory, sweet birch, corn-cobs, white ash, or beech.

The smoke-house is the best place in which to keep hams until they are wanted. If removed, they should be kept cool, dry, and free from flies.

A canvas cover for each, saturated with lime, which may be put on with a whitewash brush, is a perfect protection against flies. When not to be kept long, they may be packed in dry salt, or even in sweet brine, without injury. A common method is to pack in dry oats, baked saw-dust, etc.

The following is the method in most general use in several of the Western States. The chine is taken out, as also the spare-ribs from the shoulders, and the mouse-pieces and short-ribs, or griskins, from the middlings. No acute angles should be left to shoulders or hams. In salting up, all the meat, except the heads, joints, and chines, and smaller pieces, is put into powdering-tubs--water-tight half-hogsheads--or into large troughs, ten feet long and three or four feet wide at the top, made of the poplar tree. The latter are much more convenient for packing the meat in, and are easily caulked, if they should crack so as to leak. The salting-tray--or box in which the meat is to be salted, piece by piece, and from which each piece, as it is salted, is to be transferred to the powdering-tub, or trough--must be placed just so near the trough that the man standing between can transfer the pieces from one to the other easily, and without wasting the salt as they are lifted from the salting-box into the trough. The salter stands on the off-side of the salting-box. The hams should be salted first, the shoulders next, and the middlings last, which may be piled up two feet above the top of the trough or tub. The joints will thus in a short time be immersed in brine.

Measure into the salting-tray four measures of salt--a peck measure will be found most convenient--and one measure of clean, dry, sifted ashes; mix, and incorporate them well. The salter takes a ham into the tray, rubs the skin, and the raw end with his composition, turns it over, and packs the composition of salt and ashes on the fleshy side till it is at least three-quarters of an inch deep all over it; and on the interior lower part of the ham, which is covered with the skin, as much as will lie on it. The man standing ready to transfer the pieces, deposits it carefully, without disturbing the composition, with the skin-side down, in the bottom of the trough. Each succeeding ham is then deposited, side by side, so as to leave the least possible s.p.a.ce unoccupied.

When the bottom is wholly covered, see that every visible part of this layer of meat is covered with the composition of salt and ashes. Then begin another layer, every piece being covered on the upper or fleshy side three-quarters of an inch thick with the composition. When the trough is filled, even full, in this way, with the joints, salt the middlings with salt only, without the ashes, and pile them up on the joints so that the liquified salt may pa.s.s from them into the trough.

Heads, joints, back bones, etc., receive salt only, and should not be put in the trough with the large pieces.

Much slighter salting will preserve them, if they are salted upon loose boards, so that the b.l.o.o.d.y brine from them can pa.s.s off. The joints and middlings are to remain in and above the trough without being re-handled, re-salted, or disturbed in any way, till they are to be hung up to be smoked.

If the hogs do not weigh more than one hundred and fifty pounds, the joints need not remain longer than five weeks in the pickle; if they weigh two hundred, or upward, six or seven weeks are not too long. It is better that they should stay in too long, rather than too short a time.

In three weeks, the joints, etc., may be hung up. Taking out of pickle, and preparing for hanging up to smoke, are thus performed: Sc.r.a.pe off the undissolved salt; if the directions have been followed, there will be a considerable quant.i.ty on all the pieces not immersed in the brine; this salt and the brine are all saved; the brine is boiled down, and the dry composition given to stock, especially to hogs. Wash every piece in lukewarm water, and with a rough towel clean off the salt and ashes.

Next, put the strings in to hang up. Set the pieces up edgewise, that they may drain and dry. Every piece is then to be dipped into the meat-paint, as it is termed, composed of warm--not hot--water and very fine ashes, stirred together until they are of the consistence of thick paint, and hang up to smoke. By being thus dipped, they receive a coating which protects them from the fly, prevents dripping, and tends to lessen all external injurious influences. Hang up the pieces while yet moist with the paint, and smoke them well.

VALUE OF THE CARCa.s.s.

No part of the hog is valueless, excepting, perhaps, the bristles of the fine-bred races. The very intestines are cleansed, and knotted into chittarlings, very much relished by some; the blood, mixed with fat and rice, is made into black puddings; and the tender muscle under the lumbar vertebrae is worked up into sausages, sweet, high-flavored, and delicious; the skin, roasted, is a rare and toothsome morsel; and a roast sucking-pig is a general delight; salt pork and bacon are in incessant demand, and form important articles of commerce.

One great value arises from the peculiarity of its fat, which, in contradistinction to that of the ox or of the sheep, is termed _lard_, and differs from either in the proportion of its const.i.tuent principles, which are essentially oleine and stearine. It is rendered, or fried out, in the same manner as mutton-suet. It melts completely at ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit, and then has the appearance of a transparent and nearly colorless fixed oil. Eighty degrees is the melting-point. It consists of sixty-two parts oleine, and thirty-eight of stearine, out of one hundred. When subjected to pressure between folds of blotting-paper, the oleine is absorbed, while the stearine remains. For domestic purposes, lard is much used: it is much better than b.u.t.ter for frying fish; and is much used in pastry, on the score of economy.

The stearine contains the stearic and margaric acids, which, when separated, are solid, and used as inferior subst.i.tutes for wax or spermaceti candles. The other, oleine, is fluid at a low temperature, and in American commerce is known as _lard-oil_, which is very pure, and extensively used for machinery, lamps, and most of the purposes for which olive or spermaceti oils are valued. It has given to pork a new and profitable use, by which the value of the carca.s.s is greatly increased. A large amount of pork has thus been withdrawn from the market, and the depression, which must otherwise have occurred, has been thereby prevented.

Where the oil is required, the whole carca.s.s, after taking out the hams and shoulders, is placed in a tub having two bottoms, the upper one perforated with holes. The pork is laid on the latter, and then tightly covered. Steam, at a high temperature, is then admitted into the tub, and in a short time all the fat is extracted, and falls upon the lower bottom. The remaining ma.s.s is bones and sc.r.a.ps. The last is fed to pigs, poultry, or dogs, or affords the best kind of manure. The bones are either used for manure, or are converted into animal charcoal, valuable for various purposes in the arts. When the object is to obtain lard of a fine quality, the animal is first skinned, and the adhering fat then carefully sc.r.a.ped off; thus avoiding the oily, viscid matter of the skin.

The _bristles_ of the coa.r.s.e breeds are long, strong, firm, and elastic.

These are formed into brushes for painters and artists, as well as for numerous domestic uses. The _skin_, when tanned, is of a peculiar texture, and very tough. It is used for making pocket-books, and for some ornamental purposes; but chiefly for the seats of riding-saddles.

The numerous little variegations on it, which const.i.tute its beauty, are the orifices whence the bristles have been removed.