] 11 SIBERIA. 



Cattlo, likt; horsiis, bocomo dearer tliu further uasl. At the same lime the prices are 

 subject to extremiily .sharp fliictiiatioris in <iopen<ience upon the harvest ami the cattle plague. 



"Wlii'ii tliei'e is u bail harvest tin; j)oor larim-r si-lis his cattli; Id mak"! up tin; deficit iti his 

 commissarial. On tli') ap|)roa(;li of an (.'pidemii; all try to sell fh"!ir cattle, preferring to do so 

 oven lor a sdiik than to risk the [)lat,'n(!. In both cases a (|uaiitlty of cattle is thrown up<)u 

 llic market, and the juicus fall to almost half, in ordnr to risri mor*! or less considerably 

 after the lirst good harvcist, or after the subsidence of the plague. 



The sheep bred in agricultural Siberia belong for the most part to a vt;ry bad br^ed. 

 They yii'Id little meat; a three-year old sheep gives a carcass of 30 to 40 pounds, very 

 littli! tallow, and woo! of inf(MMor (juality and of small (|nantity, namely from 25 to 40 pound > 

 per ten shw\). The prodncn of sheep farming is almost entirely consumed by the peas- 

 ant at home. Tht; Ix'St breeds of sheep are raisiMl, on tlin one hand, on the southern bordtr-r- 

 laiids of the governments of Tobolsk and Tomsk, adjacent to the Kirghiz steppe, and on tli" 

 other, in the Minusinsk region and in Transbaikalia. In the former a considerable part of the 

 sheep belong to the Kirghiz Kurdiuk or fat-tailed breed, kept for its tallow; a yearling 

 yields 20 pounds, a three-year old, a poud or more; in the latter place a degenerated race of 

 merinos is bred chiefly for its wool. 



Cattle breeding, although as already remarked only a secondary source of the prosp'-rity 

 of agricultural Siberia, affords an essential help in bad years. A terrible calamity for the 

 people, hardly less so than a bad harvest, is the plague, whether the Siberian or c h u m a. Both 

 forms of disease are particularly destinctive in the Barabinsk steppe and the localities adjacent 

 to the Kirghiz steppe, which are the chief foci of the Siberian plague for the whole of 

 Western Siberia. The propagation of epizootic diseases is here facilitated by the careless 

 treatment of the cattle, although they are on the whole very well fed. The standard feed in 

 the majority of places in agricultural Siberia is 150 to 200 and more pouds of hay per work- 

 ing horse with an addition of 10 to 15 pouds of oats, 50 to 100 pouds of hay with a cor- 

 rospon<ling (juantity of straw per cow, and 25 pouds of hay per sheep. 



For the Kirghiz of the steppe regions and in part for the Transbaikal Bu- 

 riats, cattle raising is no longer a secondary but the chief source of livelihood. In the 

 steppes, horses and sheep are the principal live stock, there being but few cattle. The horses 

 are bred for transport and for food in the form of meat and k u ra y s, and for sale to the 

 neighbouring settled population, sheep for slaughter for their meat and tallow, of which the 

 steppe variety produces a large quantity. The surplus flocks are sold alive to cattle drivers 

 who take them to the tallow works, where they are slaughtered. The Kirghiz also keep cam- 

 els which they employ in summer as beasts of burden and in \nuter harness to common 

 peasant sledges. 



The Kirghiz scarcely prepare any hay for winter, but leave the cattle to wander over 

 the snow-clad steppe and pick up whatever food they can. When the snow is soft and does 

 not lie thick, large cattle easily dig down to the dry herbage, and are then followed by 

 the sheep. But when the first snows are succeeded by rain and then by frosts, and the ground 

 is covered with a crust of hard ice, a consequence of such a glazed frost is a lack of fodder 

 during the continuance of which tens and hundreds of thousands of large and especially small 



