A History of British Livestock Husbandry, to 1700 [Paperback]

CONTENTS

PREFACE ix

1. PREHISTORIC AND ROMAN BRITAIN 1

Neolithic pastoralists and their stock; origins of the first domesticated oxen; neolithic pastoral methods, the Bronze Age and the rise of sheep; origins of British prehistoric sheep; the Celtic shorthorn; the Bronze Age ranches, the domesticated horse; the pre-Roman and Romano-British Iron Age; the Roman sheep farms, the Ramano-British horse; facts and guesses

2. SAXON SETTLEMENT AND DOMESDAY SURVEY 43

The pre-Conquest evidence; Saxon literary and legal sources; pig husbandry; Saxon cattle and their uses; sheep and milk production; the problem of the Saxon horse; Domesday and other surveys; the plow team and the cow; the eleventh century sheep population; the pig and woodland pannage; wild and tame horses in Domesday; eleventh century livestock breeds

3. LIVESTOCK FARMING IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 87

Method of treatment; the twelfth century; the livestock of the peasantry; growth of markets and of production for sale; mobility of mediaeval livestock; the housing of stock; mediaeval livestock feeding; milk yields of cows and ewes; the economy of the demesne farm; mediaeval stock mortality rates

4. MEDIAEVAL SHEEP HUSBANDRY 131

Importance of the sheep industry; growth of the European mediaeval wool trade; sheep population of Britain; economic organization upon the great estates; Welsh and Scottish sheep farming; peasant and yeoman flocks; policy of flock management; flock fecundity and culling; infections and infestations of the sheep; feeding the mediaeval sheep; breeds and wool types; the yield of wool; shearing and wool storage; the profits from sheep

5. THE LIVESTOCK TOPOGRAPHY OF TUDOR AND STUART BRITAIN 172

Topographical sources; southwest England; the South Country; Berkshire;l3�