Pigs : breeds and management / by Sanders Spencer ; with a chapter on diseases of the pig by Professor J. Wortley Axe ; and a chapter on bacon and ham curing by L. M. Douglas.

Spencer, Sanders, 1840-

Date:: 1905

Credit: Pigs : breeds and management / by Sanders Spencer ; with a chapter on diseases of the pig by Professor J. Wortley Axe ; and a chapter on bacon and ham curing by L. M. Douglas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$another portion of this work. In certain districts of Staf- fordshire and the adjoining counties, the breeders of these mahogany-coloured pigs took considerable pains by selection to increase the feeding properties of their pigs without losing their distinctive colour. These pigs were not particularly quick feeders, but they were prolific, and when well fattened, furnished a splendid carcase of pork, nicely intermixed with lean. Some eighteen or twenty years since, when our bacon curers opened the campaign against the then fashionable short, fat, and heavy forequartered pig, which carried nearly two-thirds of its weight in the least valuable part of the car- case, the Tamworth was taken up by the late Mr. G. ]\I. Allender and a few others as the type of pig to cross with the fat pigs, and so render them of more value to the bacon curer. The introduction into the prize list of the Royal Agricultural Society of a separate class for Middle White Yorkshires, which had hitherto been shown in the any other breed classes, gave the breeders of Tamworths a most favour- able opportunity to bring their favourites before the public. For some years the Tamworths have had separate classes at the Royal shows, with the result that many supporters of the breed have sent their pigs for exhibition. As no par- ticular exhibitor appeared to be so very much more suc- cessful than his competitors, and as the majority of them adopted the system of showing only those pigs bred by themselves—a system which is productive of far greater improvement in a variety of stock than when a few wealthy men buy up all the best of the pigs of each season, and thus kill competition—large and very good entries of Tam- worths were seen, particularly at the shows held at Bir- mingham in November. Amongst those who, besides the late Mr. G. M. Allender and the Aylesbury Dairy Com- pany, of which he was manager, have successfully exhibited Tamworths might be mentioned Lord Auckland, Messrs. Egbert de Hamel, J. A. Herbert, J. Hill, R. Ibbotson,$