Cattle

Consumption depended on the Abbey's herding enough plough oxen to draw its demesne ploughs. The Abbey maintained a strict equilibrium between the number of oxen on each manor and demesne ploughs.^[15] Manors located on lighter limestones and gravels held demesne plough teams composed of six oxen. The majority of manors kept the standard eight-oxen team. The total number of oxen on the estate numbered 462 for the sixty-two demesne ploughs. The mean number of oxen on the estate in the first decade of the fourteenth century, 529, represented only a 20 percent increase over the twelfth-century herd.^[16] The Abbey had already established the scale of its oxen husbandry by the early twelfth century. Peasant oxen, based on the number of peasant ploughs on the Abbey's manors, clearly out-numbered those on the demesne by a ratio of three to one in the early twelfth century.

The Abbey followed a complex strategy for herding its cows. On most of its manors it maintained just enough cows to produce oxen for demesne ploughs. On over half of the manors, cows numbered less than one quarter of the oxen herd. Seven manors without a cow herd had to rely on the market or other manors to supply them with their oxen. To ensure the supply of draft beasts on the estate, the Abbey kept three herds of breeding cows at the manors of Eye, Oxney, and Alwalton. Specialization in dairying activity could be expected on the three breeding manors. The herd of 123 cows on the Peterborough estate in 1125 was not large enough to provide enough milk to produce the 17,280 pounds (6,472 kg) of cheese collected annually in the Ramsey food farm. Even in the early fourteenth century with a herd of dairy cows numbering just under two hundred, Peter-

borough Abbey produced approximately 15,000 pounds (6,818 kg) of cheese, butter, and milk and marketed 50 percent of the yield of dairy produce. The Abbey very rarely milked its ewes in the early fourteenth century. In the twelfth century the Abbey must have milked both sheep and cows to produce enough cheese for consumption.

The Abbey continued to use breeding manors to supply stock to its manors in the fourteenth century. The ratio of oxen to cows maintained on the manor of Castor illustrates the continuity of management practices on an "equilibrium" manor, where just enough cows were kept to produce the requisite oxen (table 8). On the manor of Castor the proportion of oxen, cows, and calves remained similar over two centuries even with an overall increase in demesne cattle.

The Abbey kept bulls on seven of its manors located in different geographical areas of the estate. On average, one bull served fifteen demesne cows, a better ratio than that for the fourteenth century, when one bull served eighteen cows. The presence of two bulls at the breeding manor of Eye underscores its specialization as breeder of demesne cattle for the estate.

Historians regard the animalia otiosa enumerated in the 1125 survey as young cattle.^[17] On the Peterborough estate no manors without cows kept animalia otiosa. Their association with cows supports the link between breeding and young stock. Their distribution on the Peterborough manors also suggests links with carrying and hauling, although their claim to leisure (otiosa ) belies such a connection. Every manor responsible for grain shipments to the Abbey kept animalia otiosa. Such animals were most heavily concentrated (74/87) within seven miles (10.4 km) of the Abbey, where carriage services were

heaviest. Manors within this radius supplied the Abbey not only with grain but with wood and other materials, such as building stone. Interestingly enough, Boroughbury, the home manor just outside the Abbey precincts, kept no animalia otiosa. The carriage of goods on the estate moved toward the Abbey precincts. Carriage did not emanate from the Abbey, which had not yet entered the economy as the direct producer and distributor of surplus it would become in the next century.