PIGS AND POULTRY 17 



apples, sloes, haws, beech-mast, and acorns. Only when the sows 

 were farrowing, or when animals were being prepared for the rich 

 man's table, were they specially fed. Pigs were fatted on inferior 

 corn, especially coarse barley, peas, beans, skim- and butter-milk, 

 or brewers' grains which were readily obtainable when nearly every 

 household brewed its own barley beer. The amount consumed 

 varied with the purpose intended to be served. The boar was fatted 

 for the feast on ten times the grain bestowed in finishing ordinary 

 animals for conversion into salted pork or smoke-dried bacon. 

 Walter of Henley implies that some attention was given to breed, 

 as he recommends the use of well-bred boars. But the only quality 

 on which he insists is that the animal should be able to dig, or, in 

 other words, support itself. Modern ideas of purchasing corn for 

 fattening purposes, or of converting into pork or bacon farm-pro- 

 duce for which no ready market was available, scarcely entered 

 into the heads of mediaeval farmers. On the contrary, they tell us 

 that, if pigs were entirely dependent on the crops of the arable 

 land, they could not be kept at a profit, when the wages of the 

 swineherd, the cost of the gram consumed, and the damage done 

 to growing crops had been taken into account. Some trade was, 

 however, carried on in stores. This is proved by the records of 

 Forncett manor (A Norfolk Manor, 1086-1565), which show that, 

 in years when no pigs were kept, stores were bought and fatted for 

 the larder. 



The poultry yard was under the care of the dairywoman, who 

 sometimes seems to have had the poultry to farm at so much a 

 head. Ducks are not mentioned in any of the mediaeval treatises 

 on farming, though they appear in the Berkeley accounts in 1321 : 

 guineafowl and turkeys were unknown. But the number of geese 

 and fowls, and, on important estates, of peacocks and swans, was 

 large, and it was swollen by the produce-rents which were often 

 paid in poultry and eggs. The author of Hosebonderie gives minute 

 instructions as to the produce for which the dairywoman ought to 

 account. " Each goose ought to have five goslings a year : " each 

 hen was to answer for 115 eggs and seven chickens, " three of which 

 ought to be made capons, and, if there be too many hen chickens, 

 let them be changed for cocks while they are young, so that each 

 hen may answer for three capons and four hens a year. And for 

 five geese you must have one gander, and for five hens one cock." 

 Besides the poultry yard, the dove-cote or pigeon-house was a 



B 



