For pastoral types 2-6 I’m going to repeat the following each time so you don’t have to go back to a previous post to see what it says.
English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250-1450 wrote:
The first and most conspicuous source of differentiation between pastoral types is the relative importance of working and non-working animals. In pastoral types 1 to 4, comprising over three-quarters of all sampled demesnes in the period 1250-1349 and more than four-fifths of demesnes in the period 1350-1449, non-working animals account for between a half and four-fifths of all livestock units. In pastoral types 5 and 6, in contrast, working animals (horses and oxen) predominate, sometimes, as in the case of pastoral type 6, to the virtual exclusion of all others. Further differentiation arises from the composition of the working and non-working sectors. On the working front, there were demesnes which relied more or less exclusively upon oxen (pastoral types 4, 5, and 6), others which employed only horses (pastoral type 1), and by far the greater number which used varying combinations of the two (pastoral types 2 and 3). On the non-working front, there were demesnes which concentrated upon cattle, usually for breeding and/or dairying (pastoral type 2), others which specialized in sheep (pastoral type 4), a good number which combined cattle with sheep (pastoral types 1 and 3), and some, even, whose prime interest was in the production of swine (pastoral type 5).
As can be seen there is a lot of variance in what each pastoral type may possess in the way of animals, how they use those animals and even the possibility of specialization in some areas of animal husbandry. By 1250 the horse was being used in certain regions not only for haulage but also for ploughing.
PASTORAL TYPE 4 DISCUSSION English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250-1450 wrote:
The dictates of arable husbandry in a horse- and ox-propelled age meant that working animals always occupied pride of place within the pastoral sector. They were the single common denominator of all pastoral types. Oxen and horses were required for ploughing, harrowing, carting, and a variety of other draught tasks and no farm could manage without them. They were the most valuable livestock and the most expensive to feed since the amount of work energy they produced was a direct function of the amount of food energy they consumed. Grain was consequently an essential component of their diets. These working animals were invariably oxen or horses.
The above statements hold true for Harn or any world where animal power was paramount for agricultural work.
With that said, I start out by providing the average breakdown of animals for pastoral type 4 and then continue on with some details mentioned in the text about it.
English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250-1450 wrote:
1250-1349:
Working animals as % livestock units – 54.3%
Oxen per 100 horses - 524
Oxen as % of total cattle units – 95.5%
Adult cattle as % non-working cattle – 7.1%
Cattle as % non-working units – 3.4%
Sheep as % non-working units – 88.5%
Swine as % non-working units – 8.1
% of all demesnes classified – 12.0%
Working animals: all horses plus oxen
Livestock units: (horses x 1.00) + (oxen, cows, and bulls x 1.20) + (immature cattle x 0.80) + (sheep and swine x 0.10)
Total cattle units: cows, bulls, and immature cattle; including oxen)
Adult cattle: oxen omitted (raw numbers, not units)
Non-working units: cows, bulls, immature cattle, sheep, and swine
Pastoral type 4, like 3, has a large contingent oxen; the main source of animal power; with horses making up about a sixth of all working animals. As far as non-working animals, sheep are, by far, the dominant pastoral resource; whereas cattle and swine are just a minor resource. At 12% of the demesnes classified, this particular pastoral type is not as widespread as some believe. Using the above numbers and we will calculate how many animals 100 animal units will generate:
Working Animals Units: 54
Horses: 7
Oxen: 39
Non-working Animals Units: 46
Adult cattle: 1
Total cattle: 41 (1 immature)
Sheep: 407
Swine: 37
Just like pastoral type 2 and 3, this is not a horse dominant pastoral type and the ratio of oxen to horses is about 5:1. At almost 89 percent of non-working animals the sheep units signify that this pastoral type definitely specializes in sheep farming. The small number of non-working cattle also signifies that this pastoral type must purchase replacement oxen and cows in order to maintain its herd.
Now we’ll take a look at some of the aspects of this pastoral type mentioned in the text. I repeat the following text because it explains why some change over to horses did occur.
English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250-1450 wrote:
For each plough there were on average eight to ten working animals, at least one or two of which would almost always have been reserved for harrowing and carting rather than ploughing. Eliminating young horses and riding horses from the calculation reduces the mean number of plough animals (affers, stots, and oxen only) per plough to 9.0 in the period 1250-1349 and 7.8 in the period 1350-1449, a 13 percent reduction. This shrinkage in mean plough-team sizes was most pronounced in the counties of eastern and central England where oxen were increasingly being replaced with horses over that period. Substitution of the horse for the ox was invariably undertaken with the aim of raising ploughing speeds and reducing team sizes. All the main areas of mixed or all-horse ploughing either had fewer teams or smaller team sizes than was normal in much of the rest of the country. Nowhere did this process proceed further than in Norfolk. Here, where horses earliest made a significant contribution to ploughing, mean team sizes shrank by a fifth from 4.9 animals in the period 1250-1349 to 3.9 animals in the period 1350-1449.
Pastoral type 4 is also a mixed working animal system. The number of animals in each team may realistically be around 7-8, in addition to the above mentioned one or two animals used for harrowing, hauling, or riding.
English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250-1450 wrote:
Accelerating ploughing speeds facilitated bringing more land into cultivation and cropping it more frequently. That usually meant converting pasture to arable and reducing the frequency of fallowing to the minimum compatible with effective weed control. Since pasture was scarce and fallows now provided little or no forage the cultivation of fodder crops became inevitable. Because this imposed a significantly increased workload on the labor force it became important to convert fodder into traction with the maximum degree of efficiency; hence the partial or complete substitution of the horse for the ox. Such a changeover was further encouraged by the fact that the greater intensity of cropping entailed a much more demanding ploughing schedule with, often, a major seasonal imbalance between autumn and spring. This pattern of development proceeded furthest in east Norfolk and north-eastern Kent and in both cases demesnes eventually converted to all-horse ploughing.
While this section is very specific to pastoral type 1 farming, it can also apply to pastoral type 4 to a lesser extent. However, for the most part, intensive arable farming was not as widespread and was actually more extensive. The farms of pastoral type 4 also tended to have more pasture available than type 1 although often of inferior quality; as a result, they specialize in sheep-farming.
English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250-1450 wrote:
In the period 1250-1349 horses accounted, on average, for a third or more of demesne draught animals in Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, and Kent. North and west of this core zone – in the middle Thames Valley, the east midlands, parts of the lower Trent Valley, and Co. Durham – horses were present in rather smaller numbers and there was a heavier emphasis upon horse-haulage rather than horse-traction. In most of the rest of the country horses made little contribution to either ploughing or carting. Horses accounting for fewer than one in seven of all demesne draught animals in Sussex and the Isle of Wright, along with most of the south-west, north-west and north of England.
Just like the regions that had a third of their teams composed of horses, as we can see from the table above, pastoral type 4 has a ratio of about 5:1.
English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250-1450 wrote:
Nationally, over a third of all sampled demesnes had a developed interest in sheep-farming in the period 1250-1349, and over a half in the period 1350-1449. Generally, the greater their specialization, the more extensive their pastoral husbandry. Those classified as pastoral type 4, for example, employed mainly oxen for draught work and kept mostly sheep for profit. Both were essentially grass-fed animals with a heavy reliance upon natural rather than produced fodder. Such an exclusive concentration on sheep was always a minority specialism.
As I mentioned above, specializing in sheep-farming was a widespread activity for this pastoral type. Since both oxen and sheep require grass it was necessary for manors practicing pastoral type 4 to have access to plenty of pasture; however, as will be seen below, the sheep could subsist on inferior pasture better then the oxen.
English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250-1450 wrote:
Seigniorial sheep-farming was an exceptionally widely distributed pastoral activity. As a primary or secondary pastoral specialism it could be found on demesnes in almost any part of the country throughout the period 1250-1450. Lords kept sheep on upland and lowland, on light-land and heavy-land, on wolds and downs and in fens and marshes. Only a minority of demesnes, however, took specialization in sheep to the extreme. Before 1350 demesnes with a more or less exclusive interest in sheep-farming appear to have been absent from the north-west and south-west. In most other parts of the country demesnes with this extreme form of specialization generally only occur as relatively isolated examples. The exception was on the chalk downlands of central-southern England and along the Oolitic limestone belt which runs diagonally across the country from Gloucestershire to Lincolnshire; here sheep-farming comprised the dominant pastoral type.
Although some of the previously mentioned pastoral types may have some sheep-farming, it is pastoral type 4 that uses it as its primary pastoral concern.
English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250-1450 wrote:
Permanent pastures in these downland and woldland environments produced a sweet, short turf upon which sheep thrived. In the absence of much surface water and meadowland cattle were not a viable alternative. The scale of seigniorial sheep-farming in these areas could be considerable… Where seigniorial sheep-farming developed so strongly there was not always the same scope for other classes of producer. It should therefore be no surprise to find many tenants without sheep in these classic sheep-farming areas.
If sheep were rarely kept by demesnes in these counties the same cannot be true of other classes of producers, for Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, and Rutland all contributed to the national wool tax of 1341 at above average rates per unit area. Perhaps sheep were better suited than cattle to the more limited pastoral and capital resources available to peasant producers. Possibly, too, the absence of much seigniorial interest in sheep-farming left greater opportunities for others to exploit.
I found the last part of the first passage interesting because many people I know assume that if the lord has sheep then his tenants do. It seems history, again, shows us the error of our ways. Most of the pasture in these downlands and woldlands would be quite inferior also and not very conducive for grazing cattle.
The later passage makes it clear though, that where a lord was not actively engaged in sheep-farming it is quite possible his tenants were. Especially since most of their pastoral resources were inferior to those in the lord’s possession.
Earlier I said the following about these land types:
Quote:
Type 2 – Open arable country with limited differentiation of unit land values
The land quality is only slightly better than type 1 above, maybe 0.80 to 0.95.
Type 3 –Arable country with limited but valuable grassland
These lands require large plough teams and amounts of labor to till. The land quality may range between 0.90 and 1.10, but the cost of working the land can reduce overall value.
Both of these land-use types have downs and wolds, mentioned above, and are also considered limited in the amount of good grasslands they possess. However, since sheep can readily adapt to the poorer grazing on downland and woldland it isn’t too much of a problem.
Next up, pastoral type 5.
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