Dear Jaccqui,
I have tried to address minimum herd sizes of cattle (and caprines) in
southern Africa.
According to Schapera (1962:23), at least 10 head of cattle is said to be
the minimum size of a herd to yield an annual disposable surplus. He worked
on Tswana farmers in South Africa and Botswana.
I concur. I have also seen that farmers in rural South Africa actually keep
only a few heads of cattle, sheep and goats, although I don’t have any data
available on this (it would be an interesting project to get some actual
numbers….). Many papers also point out that farmers and pastoralists only
need a few animals to yield a surplus.
A potential issue with small herds/flocks would be inbreeding. However,
there would be two ways to get around this problem. First, there are
different forms of inbreeding, and a farmer can manage it very effectively
within a small herd or flock by choosing different strategies or forms of
inbreeding. There is a large literature on the different forms of inbreeding
in domestic animals.
Second, although inbreeding causes various defects over a few generations in
domestic animals, the simplest way to get rid of these would be to introduce
new, unrelated individuals (through exchange, raiding, bridewealth payments,
etc).
Herd and flock sizes can be modeled, as Dahl and Hjort attempted for cattle.
I recently tried to do it for domestic turkeys in the American Southwest.
Also see the Newman paper below for sheep.
A few useful references on small cattle and caprine herd sizes (mostly
summarised in my own paper, which I will send you a PDF separately):
Badenhorst, S. 2008. Subsistence change among farming communities in
southern Africa during the last two millennia: a search for potential
causes. In: Badenhorst, S. Mitchell, P. & Driver, J. C. (eds) Animals and
People: Archaeozoological Papers in Honour of Ina Plug, 215-228. Oxford:
British Archaeological Series 1849.
Schapera, I. 1962. The Tswana. London: International African Institute.
Braker, M. J. E., H. M. J. Udo and E. C. Webb. 2002. Impacts of intervention
objectives in goat production within subsistence farming systems in South
Africa. South African Journal of Animal Science 32(3):185-191.
Newman, E. I. 2002. Medieval sheep-corn farming: how much grain yield could
each sheep support? Agricultural History Review 50(2):164-180.
Sieff, D. F. 1997. Herding strategies of the Datoga pastoralists of
Tanzania: is household labor a limiting factor. Human Ecology 25(4):519-544.
Sutter, J. W. 1987. Cattle and inequality: herd size differences and
pastoral production among the Fulani of northeastern Senegal. Africa
57(2):196-218.
All best,
Shaw
Dr. Shaw Badenhorst
Department of Archaeozoology
Transvaal Museum
PO Box 413
Pretoria
0001
South Africa
On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:51:38 +0000 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Another general query.....any suggestions?
>
> Dear Jacqui,
>
> A collegue has asked me to enquire from you if you know the source of
> a quote that crofters would need 50 sheep in order to survive a year.
> If you have any figures on how many sheep, cows and bulls were
> consderd the minimum by such farming groups that would be appreciated.
> He is trying to work out how much livestock Neolithic farmers might
> have needed in order to survive a year.
>
> Many thanks.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Paul.
>