Anyone with farming background? Cattle per acre question....

[Mosaic]

I'm looking into a bit of research regarding cattle-raising in the north-west of England in the middle ages. I wonder if anyone can hazard an informed guess in answer to how many cows / bulls could be kept per acre:
A) on meadows that they were moved off in the summer so a hay crop could be produced
B) on unimproved upland pasture

These animals would be a lot smaller than today's breeds, so if you can add any insights based on smaller cattle that would be brilliant.

[NOX]

I'll hazard a guess about the whole thing, but it's not a simple as simply working out a logical number. The northwest if England varies drastically from moorland to quite sensible pasture therefore your keeping rate could be anything from 1 cow per couple of acres to two cows per acre in good pasture ( I think the latter is somwhat unlikely to be honest). If you take hay in the summer you need to leave the pasture ungrazed completely until the hay is taken. On unimporved upper pasture cattle would do generally quite badly and winter would have seen off a great many oweing to starvation. Cattle from that period would as you have said have been considerably smaller probably only about 1m 10 ( similar to Kerrys) and my understanding is that they were coralled near to habitation and taken to graze during winter.
If you have to go with a number to rear them well then go somewhere roughly with 1 animal per couple of acres- it's a very imprecise set of avriables:)

[Mosaic]

Thanks Nox - much appreciated - and your suggestions tie in with what's in the accounts ie quite a lot of deaths through 'murrain' (which could be anything, we're talking 1300).
I'm also curious about how, or whether, new bloodstock was introduced - I'm thinking that inbreeding may have weakened the local stock and been a major contributor to the decision to sell off the ranch to tenant farmers - this was a large cattle-ranch whose prime purpose was rearing oxen for sale as draught animals ie a medieval tractor factory.....

[NOX]

Ah well if you are talkling about Vaccaries then that's a slightly different matter. The grazing would have been better, often they employed a tenant to tend anything between 100 and 200 animals and the grazing was pretty well managed. with regards to bringing in new stock- I think it's feasible that new stock was intorduced. not your area I know but in Jersey and Guernsey they intorduced new stock fairly regularly form before the Norman conquest as they were an island and would have suffered doubly from inbreeding issues unless they had a minimum of three unrelated bulls, so clearly it was understood that there was a need for the odd intake of new blood.
what period are you after exactly as this matter tremendously when answering the questions of why the Vaccaries were flogged off- if it's the 1460's then several reasons- there was a Europe wide recession and we were right in the middle fo the wars of the roses, which caused general destabilisation and loss of manpower. Trade was hit very badly during that period so the notion of selling oxen all over the place didn't work well- so tenenting became popular. Let me know if you have any specific dates or anything else, the more info I have ion what you're after the better I can answer really:)

[NOX]

Sorry about the typos Mosaic- my brian injury is kicking me today:(

[Mosaic]

Thanks Nox - vaccaries it is, but these particular ones seem to have have been rented out to tenant farmers paying cash rents before the Black Death (1340s). The matter of national economics is often raised to explain this. One work I've just looked at links the break-up in part to the earl of lancaster's estates being split up after his fall from grace....1322...which could also disrupt the integrated farm-to-markets system that had been built up.
However - you'd think this system would be an attractive reason for wanting to acquire these estates, so why disrupt it?
So among the many reasons why the lease-out happened, I'm wondering if genetic degredation and land exhaustion in the early 1300s were contributory factors.

[NOX]

Well, national economics always played a major part in something like this and the suggestion that Lancaster's demise was also contributory also makes perfect sense. How far north in the North West of England are we talkling about because if it was anywhere bordering Wales or further up towards scotland some Vaccdaries were dismantled because of the rustling problems encountered, especially during the 100 years war period.There was also a massive move during that period of droving cattle into the home counties to be killed and salted and dispatched to France. Wherabouts exactly are you trying to find out about?

[Mosaic]

I'm looking at the Barley vaccary which is still quite visible to the west of the village of Barley in Lancashire. It was an area that received tender attention from the scots but this does not appear to have been the exact trigger for this vaccary's break-up.
The sales of oxen were mainly via the de Lacy networks to Bolton ie Bolton in Greater Manchester, or Pontefract where the market was part of the family's property. So droving existed in the 1200s but then it all dies off quite quickly in the second quarter of the 1300s. It's the comparative, or apparent, speed of this that intrigues me and makes me wonder whether 'natural causes' added to the other factors to lead to the break-up of the ranch.

[NOX]

I see, well if you are looking for a 'natural' reason, there were the great famines which ran from 1315 all the way to the early 1320's before they properly abated, so bad that people resorted to cannibalism, so one wonders if folk resorted to eating themselves how many cattle were actually alive at that point to be farmed at all? It could well be that a combinaiton of bad harvest producing such an extreme famine, the misfortunes of Lancaster, general economic european malaise would be enough to make the vaccay untennable. It's an interesting

[NOX]

sorry hit enter too soon...
It's an interesting quesiton that you've asked as by the early 1400's I have:-

'James Banastre had Barley vaccary at £5 13s. 4d. rent, instead of £4 10s.'
whether this was purely as a tenant in his own right or a vaccary tenant I really don't know. I would not normally have expected to see the demise of many vaccaries until the 15th century so this is certianly interesting.
Once again apologies for any typos, things look right to be sometimes and then don't- and vice versa if I'm having a bad day.

[NOX]

Potted link regarding the famine:-

http://edwardthesecon...ine-1315-to-1317.html

[NOX]

And this is an interesting link explaining why north western holdings suffered economically and from the famine long after the rest of the country recovered...
https://docs.google.c...9ZehUKysVGddYCa1HBx0g

[Mosaic]

Fantastic links Nox! Muy, muy gracias......

Fills in a lot of gaps and begs for some peat-bog pollen analysis to test the physical traces of the famine.

I will gratefully bear your children in return for this assistance.

[NOX]

Lol thank you so much, don't think I've ever been so thanked on answerbank before;-)
I really enjoyed this question, there are never sensible interesting questions on AB anymore.

Peat bog pollen analysis....hmmmmm:)

[Mosaic]

I also wonder about the comparative absence of intelligent threads Nox. But what's to be done if there's only us...?
BTW the food program on BBC2 last night (11th April) added more insights about the whole cattle droving shtick - shame it had that nit Giles Coren in it.

[Johnysid]

In the South East we used to work on a rule on thumb of 1 cow per acre in the days when cattle went out to pasture. This was for Jerseys so would apply to smaller breeds. But you could not keep cattle at 1 per acre in the long term. The main problem is disease (flukes etc) if you keep the land for pasture using organic methods. In the days before modern veterinary interventions and pesticides to kill snails etc. you would be lucky to get a stable population of more than 1 cow per two acres provided you fenced the land so half of it could rest for at least a year. You might see old records of 1 cow to the acre but I doubt if this would have been stable - disease and mineral deficiency etc would set in. Halve these figures for northern hillsides.

Cows would be best at low density on the commons in a primitive environment or family cows would be tethered near home to feed on old twigs, sawdust, household waste etc. and be led to roadside sites/commons for extra feeding (like in India today).