I had planned to devote lot No. 2 to a piggery.  There are five acres in this lot, and I thought it large enough to keep four or five hundred pigs of all sizes in good health and good condition for forcing.  Some of the swine, not intended for market, would have more liberty; but close confinement in clean pens and small runs was to be the rule.  To crowd hogs in this way, and at the same time to keep them free from disease, would require special vigilance.  The ordinary diseases that come from damp and draughts could be fended off by carefully constructed buildings.  Cleanliness and wholesome food ought to do much, and isolation should accomplish the rest.  I have established a perfect quarantine about my hog lot, and it has never been broken.  After the first invoices of swine in the winter and spring of 1896, no hog, young or old, has entered my piggery, save by the way of a sixty-day quarantine in the wood lot, and very few by that way.

My pigs are several hundred yards from the public roads, and my neighbor, Jackson, has planted a young orchard on his land to the north of my hog lots, and permits no hogs in this planting.  I have thus secured practical isolation.  I have rarely sent swine to fairs or stock shows.  In the few instances in which I have broken this rule I have sold the stock shown, never returning it to Four Oaks.

Isolation, cleanliness, good food, good water, and a constant supply of ashes, charcoal, and salt, have kept my herd (thus far) from those dreadfully fatal diseases that destroy so many swine.  If I can keep the specific micro-organism that causes hog-cholera off my place, I need not fear the disease.  The same is true of swine plague.  These diseases are of bacterial origin, and are communicated by the transference of bacteria from the infected to the non-infected.  I propose to keep my healthy herd as far removed as possible from all sources of infection.  I have carried these precautions so far that I am often scoffed at.  I require my swineherd, when returning from a fair or a stock show, to take a full bath and to disinfect his clothing before stepping into the pig-house.  This may seem an unnecessary refinement in precautionary measures, but I do not think so.  It has served me well:  no case of cholera or plague has shown itself at Four Oaks.

What would I do if disease should appear?  I do not know.  I think, however, that I should fight it as hard as possible at close quarters, killing the seriously ill, and burning all bodies.  After the scourge had passed I would dispose of all stock as best I could, and then burn the entire plant (fences and all), plough deep, cover the land white as snow with lime, leave it until spring, plough again, and sow to oats.  During the following summer I would rebuild my plant and start afresh.  A whole year would be lost, and some good buildings, but I think it would pay in the end.  There would be no safety for the herd while a single colony of cholera or plague bacteria was harbored on the place; and while neither might, for years, appear in virulent form, yet there would be constant small losses and constant anxiety.  One cannot afford either of these annoyances, and it is usually wise to take radical measures.  If we apply sound business rules to farm management, we shall at least deserve success.