ved
with stone or brick that the flock may be less exposed to damp and
mud. When the flock passes the night out of doors, a place should be
selected having the same exposure and the fold strewn with leaves to
protect the flock from fouling themselves.

"There is not much difference in the method of handling goats in the
pasture from sheep, but goats have this characteristic, that they
prefer the mountain woodland pastures to meadows, for they feed
eagerly on the brushwood and in cultivated places crop the shrubbery;
indeed, their name _caprae_ is derived from _carpere_, to crop. For
this reason it is customary to stipulate in farm leases that the
tenant shall not graze any goat on the leased land, for their teeth
are the enemies of all planted crops: wherefore the astrologers were
careful to station them in the heavens outside of the pale of the
twelve signs of the zodiac, but there are two kids and a goat not far
from Taurus.

"So far as concerns breeding, it is the custom to separate the bucks
from the pastured flock at the end of autumn and confine them apart,
as has been said with respect to rams. The nannies which conceive at
this time drop their kids in four months, and so in the spring. In
what regards rearing the kids, it is enough to say that when they are
three months old they are raised and may join the flock. What shall I
say of the health of these animals who never have any? yet the flock
master should have written down what remedies are used for certain of
their maladies and especially for the wounds which often befall them
by reason of their constant fighting among themselves and their
feeding in thorny places. It remains to speak of number: this is
less to the herd in the case of goats than with sheep because of the
wantonness and wandering habit of the goat: sheep, on the other hand,
are wont to flock together and keep in one place.

"For another reason it is the custom in Gaul to divide the goats into
many flocks rather than concentrate them in large ones, because a
pestilence quickly takes possession of a large herd and sweeps it to
destruction. About fifty goats is considered to be a large enough
flock.

"The experience of Gaberius, a Roman of the equestrian order, will
illustrate the reason for this: for he, who had a thousand jugera of
land near Rome, met one day a certain goatherd leading ten goats to
town, and heard him say that he made a denier[126] a day out of each
goat, whereupon Gaberi