Chapters
Ancient writers conveyed that Roman breeding was the best mixture of knowledge and art possible for man. According to Varro, the trick was to feed as many animals as possible at the lowest possible cost. He said that the main goal of any grower should be to make the most profit possible. It is quite a modern approach to agriculture, and more than 2,000 years have passed since these words were written.
In his textbook on agriculture, Varro divided the knowledge about farming into three separate sections. In breeding, he distinguished small livestock, including goats, sheep and pigs, large livestock i.e. horses, donkeys, oxen, bulls and cows, and auxiliary livestock, without which the work of a breeder would not be possible. He included dogs and shepherds in the auxiliary inventory. The shepherd was included in the livestock because he lived with grazing animals, and his price was often less than one milk cow. However, it was indispensable for the proper operation of a farm.
Varron was the first writer to try to scientifically explain the history of agriculture and animal husbandry by man. He divided the stories of mankind into three periods, which he called the gatherer age, the breeding age, and the farming age. In the first era, man lived with the animals in the forest and was not much different from them. He ate what the gods, or nature, gave him. In the age of breeders, from the animals around him, man chose the most useful ones, tamed them and began to use products derived from them to feed himself and his family. In the agricultural era, people began to use the land itself for food. This division introduced by him is actually valid in human consciousness until today.
Another Roman writer, Columella, noted that the goals of the farmer and the breeder are inherently divergent, and conflicts constantly break out between them. Only a very good farmer can be both a farmer and a breeder. A farmer would like to allocate all the land to pasture for his animals, while the farmer tries to plough the same land and sow grain. Columella believed that a good landlord was able to divide his estate in such a way as to benefit both from farming and cultivating the land. Well, in his time, farms were vast, completely different from the scattered scraps of land that now constitute the majority of farms in Poland. However, Columella made a big discovery. He noticed that animal and human excreta even on the tiniest scrap of land would make it fertile and suitable for cultivation over time. In northern Europe (i.e. in Poland among others), a similar discovery was made only 1300 years later and its result was gigantic progress that had been made in the lives of Europeans from the end of the 15th century. His observation that cattle breeding means wealth, based on the similarity of three Latin words: pecus – cattle, pecunia – money and pecullum – wealth, is up to date, perhaps only slightly to a different extent.
The ancient Romans raised cattle in large numbers because it was a very profitable enterprise and necessary for the proper functioning of their economy. Thanks to this breeding, milk and its derivatives (mainly cheese), meat, skins and the necessary draft animals were obtained. It should be noted that the homeland of the best cheeses are the regions of Europe where rational cattle breeding has been conducted for over 2,000 years, i.e. Italy, France and partly Spain. All these countries were part of the Roman Empire for over 500 years.
All wheeled transport in the areas of the Roman Empire was based on wolf sledges. The horse was most often used as a war animal (cavalry and war chariots) as a pack animal and as a mount. It was rarely used for the harness because the Romans could not invent a suitable harness that would use all its possibilities. The statues showing the Roman harness indicate that it was a harness, but one fatal solution was used in it. The horse’s neck was girdled with a leather collar that tightened around his larynx as he pulled an oversized wagon. This type of harness only worked for a light chariot, where the horse was galloping a short distance. Horse statues from Roman times show the truth: a tight leather noose around the neck suffocated the animal, resulting in bared teeth, bulging eyes and a sort of terror and fear in its silhouette. The usual hard hack was not invented until after the fall of the Roman Empire.
Oxen were necessary for the hardest fieldwork, especially ploughing. It was a very laborious job. Roman ploughs did not overturn the furrows but only moved the soil sideways. For this reason, to obtain the proper loosening of the soil, it was ploughed twice: once along the field and then across the already ploughed area. For this reason, three pairs of oxen were needed to support one peasant family (and they were quite numerous). Translating this into modern requirements – three medium-sized tractors would be needed to work the land on one decent peasant farm. In addition to six steers, a typical Roman peasant farm at the beginning of our era had to include a breeding bull and a dozen cows. It was a model self-sufficient farm that did not produce too many products for sale. In Poland, it was the model that was mentioned in official state documents at the end of the communist era. 2,000 years have passed, and there has been hardly any change in the perception of agriculture since the beginning of the Roman Empire.
In the 1st century CE however, major changes took place in Roman agriculture. There was a fairly quick consolidation of lands in the hands of a small group of great Roman owners. Farms that we would call specialized today were established. One of the most popular specializations was cattle breeding. Such a farm is described by the Roman encyclopedist Pliny. He says that the farm had a minimum of 60 cows and two breeding bulls. The cows gave birth to an average of 1 calf per year (sometimes there were twins, but this was rarer than in humans). The inquisitive Pliny calculated that among women, twins are born once in 100, and in cows, once in 250. He made little mistakes in his calculations. Nowadays, gynaecologists say that twin pregnancies occur in humans once in every 80 deliveries, and vets say that such pregnancies in cattle are three times less frequent than in humans. The calves were kept on the farm for two years, and then they were intended for slaughter or for further breeding. It follows that the herd described by Pliny on a specialized livestock farm consisted of about 150 head of cattle. It is a number that resembles modern livestock farms in an order of magnitude. At that time, the best breeding bulls were those that were 4 years old, and the heifer should become pregnant for the first time when it is 2 years old. Pliny reports that 10-year-old bulls were removed from breeding, because the breeding abilities were significantly reduced, and the weight could lead to injuries or even death of two young heifers. He also calculated the life expectancy of the cows. He noticed that they died of natural causes after the age of 29. According to him, bulls lived a few years shorter, but if they were castrated in their youth, they could live up to 30 years as oxen.