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The quickest and safest way to assure a well-placed stick and good bleed — on a porker which is as calm as possible and with equipment which is readily available — is to put the hog into a small pen, with clean straw on the floor, and shoot it at point-blank range in the center of the forehead with something at least as heavy as a .22 long-rifle solid point, but better, a .38-caliber pistol.

Shooting usually (but not always) stuns the hog so that it drops . . . but does not stop the heart, which will pump the blood out of the stick wound. Normally, within 10 seconds of the stunning shot, the hog starts to convulse. It should be turned on its back and stuck, then, during this interval so that you may withdraw the knife and step back to avoid being kicked when the spasms begin.

A lot of equipment, hot water and hard work can be dispensed with if the carcass is simply washed off with warm, soapy water and rinsed and skinned . . . instead of being scalded and scraped as is traditional. No one eats the skin on bacon or ham anyway, and the pieces cure and store just as well without it . . . so why all this scalding and scraping and lifting 250-pound hogs in and out of hot water? Shoot it, stick it, scrub it and skin it. It works well for me.

R.E. Rapp, M.D.
Weyers Cave, Va.

Just a letter to share the findings we've made in our second season of hog raising.

Last year, as I mentioned in "The Pig Report" (MOTHER NO. 17), the big problem was mud. We had fenced off an area 12' x 12' for pigs and the whole of it was mire. Mike studied the situation and came up with four changes:

[1] Make the pigpen enclosure smaller. Reducing the fenced-in to 7' x 12', still plenty of pig room, made it possible to . . .

[2] Pave the ground around and under the feeding trough with old porch boards to prevent mud splatter.

[3] This year, we're using an old cast-iron pump trough, 18" x 30" x 5" deep, set at the edge of the flooring half in and half out of the fence. Easy to get to, easy to clean.

[4] We further guarded against mud buildup near the trough by grading the pen so that the runoff was directed away from the feed area and channeled on down the yard away from the goat pen too. An afternoon's work, and well worth it.

In reading one of those "How I Bought 40 Acres" books, I came across a good Yankee tip for Using Up Things. When a jar of mayonnaise, catsup, apple butter or whatever is empty, you rinse it out, right? Granted, many of us use very few commercially jarred products but even home-canned mincemeat and jam jars must be rinsed. Well, half fill the jar with water, slosh and stir it all around or put the lid on and shake. Pour the resulting brew over the pig's lunch. Sure, it's a drop in the bucket . . . but it all adds up. And if you're taking those jars to the recycling center, you'll have to rinse them anyhow.

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