Preventing liver spots.

My mother told me her mom always put the left over wash water from the laundry into the pigs trough and also the dish water to prevent liver spots. She was referring to the time they used homemade lye soap. If they were foraging in the woods for a period she would put lye into the water troughs. My mom said she never seen liver spots on any of my grandmothers hogs at slaughter but seen a lot on other hogs.
Does anyone know what the spots were and how the lye prevented them?

There are a lot of old folk remedies out there that are just crazy. Not saying that one is, but I'd take it with a grain of salt. Our pigs have never had any spots in their livers. It may have been parasites or disease causing them, but I don't think spots in the liver are something you should worry about until you have a pig with them. Lye can be very caustic, and could burn out their esophagus if you're not careful.

There was a practice the Native Americans used where they added some lye (wood ashes) to corn to make nixtamal - prevented thiamine deficiency diseases by unlocking some nutrients in the corn. But I think they either added very little or rinsed it off before eating the corn. Southerners learned this practice but called the end product "hominy" - which USED to be corn boiled with some lye to remove the outer hull and unlock the nutrients.

John Sizemore wrote: My mother told me her mom always put the left over wash water from the laundry into the pigs trough and also the dish water to prevent liver spots. She was referring to the time they used homemade lye soap. If they were foraging in the woods for a period she would put lye into the water troughs. My mom said she never seen liver spots on any of my grandmothers hogs at slaughter but seen a lot on other hogs. Does anyone know what the spots were and how the lye prevented them?

Yes, I can believe that works. Intestinal parasites can be killed by a lot of things including changing the gut pH.

I just butchered today and had 1 with a handful of spots, the others were perfect. Kinda disappointing, but then again I haven't raised pigs in 20+ years so... I chose to use DE, garlic, and rosemary for parasites, about 2 tbsps per pig per day. Think I should up the dose a fuzz for next time or count this one as a fluke, or is there something better than the items I used that I don't know about and is natural? They all had the same everything from day 1.