Last month I visited the Plantation Agriculture Museum in Scott, Arkansas. The museum had tons of cool stuff related to agriculture and cotton (which I may post in the future), but the section that really caught my heart (and my stomach) was the excellent animal husbandry section. Here’s a few of my favorite bits:

Typical branding irons. It kind of hurts just to look at them.

Egg Incubators

Hog feeding troughs, water bottles

Here’s an old advertisement for a hog oiler, which a hog rubs up against. The oil supposedly helps the hog with animal bites and skin irritations?

A sample hog oiler. Hog oilers are huge in the antique collectors market, especially cast iron oilers. Who knew???

Old timey veterinary tools

Speculum, for keeping a cow’s mouth open

Poultry laxative. Yep.

Calf weaners were placed in a calf’s nose, and caused the animal pain when it tried to nurse. This lead the calf to  move on to eating grain sooner, so it would bulk up.

I saved the best for last: the “Emasculator” was used for castrating calves. You might want to rub on some udder balm afterwards. 🙁