FEEDING GOAL TO PICS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3411, 30 December 1911, Page 10

FEEDING GOAL TO PICS.

AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCES

The use of coal as a regular article of diet for pigs kept in confinement has some warm advocates, while ethers rregard it as pandering to a depraved appetite. Mr L. L. Ramsay, one ofthe most successful Berkshire orceders in. New South Wales, is among the thorough believers in giving _,oal regularly to pigs. His method is to give ; it at the rate of a good handful once , a day to each pig with its food. His I experience is.--that his pigsi have dene noticeably better since be lias gi-ven them the coal slack, that they look for •it, .find will eat it in preference to charcoal, ashes, or coal cinders. As a matter of fact, many pigs will pick it i out first liefore •'touching the other food. Goburn, one of the toreirost American authorities on swine, it may be mentioned, says that “when coal is eaton. .too largely by pigs it b nds to xonst-'pation, but the consensus of i; breeders’ opinions is that in moderate amounts it is beneficial rather than •diarjnful,: and as a corrective tonic, or {■condiment, its use should he commendI ed.” The South-eastern Agricultural College (England), too, claims a value for coal in the fattening of pigs. In some experiments conducted at that bcpllege. it Ms stated coal slack g;.ve a) i'decided advantage when fed along with n'iWlfu.ais compared with feeding meal wit-hTjhtnit! adding as much as 3s per head toßthe value of the pigs The deduction from these tests was that about 31b per head per week should not be exceeded.