Feed lots and pastures cannot be disinfected in this fashion, but applications of lime and an occasional plowing will help.
=Hog wallows and dips.= The pig is not naturally a filthy animal, and if given an opportunity will keep fairly clean. During the extreme heat of summer the pig suffers, owing to the fact that he perspires but little. He seeks the shelter of a cool mud wallow to get relief from heat and parasites. The intelligent hog raiser will provide a concrete wallow and keep it filled with eight or ten inches of water. Coal-tar or crude oil added to the water helps to rid the animal of lice. Where the animals are badly infested with lice it will be necessary to wet them all over, as the lice are found behind the ears, inside of the legs and in the folds of the skin. A two per cent solution of creolin may be used for this purpose.
=Worms.= Pigs are often affected with worms which interfere with their thriftiness. A tablespoonful of castor oil and forty drops of oil of American wormseed should be given in the slop to wormy pigs. Six grains of santonin and four grains of calomel per 100 pound pig is also used successfully.
=Hog cholera.= It is not possible within the scope of a small book to describe all of the diseases that attack pigs. Every pig club member, however, should know something about hog cholera, the greatest scourge which attacks swine.
The germs of hog cholera may be carried on the boots of visitors, by pigeons or dogs. It can only be combatted by vaccination of healthy hogs, quarantining of all sick hogs, burning of all dead hogs and disinfection of premises.
(1) The injection of an anti-cholera serum, which makes the hog immune only a few months or weeks.
(2) The simultaneous treatment whereby the serum used in (1) and the defibrinated blood or virus from a diseased hog are injected together. This treatment renders the hog immune for life.
(3) In the combination method, serum alone is used first, and ten days later the simultaneous treatment is administered. This method is seldom used. The services of a skilled veterinarian should be secured to vaccinate hogs.
=Feeds and feeding.= Protein, fats, and carbohydrates are the three classes of nutrients found in feeds. These, in addition to mineral matter and water, furnish material for the maintenance and growth of the pig. Proteins furnish the material for the production of muscle. Fats and carbohydrates provide fuel for heating the body and giving activity to the muscles. An excess of food nutrients, especially fats and carbohydrates, is stored in the body as fat. The mineral matter goes into the production of bone.