(LIV) This is the way that provender should be prepared and fed:  When the seeding is finished, gather mast and soak it in water.  Feed a measure of it every day to each steer; or if they have not been worked it will be sufficient to let them pasture the mast beds.  Another good feed is a measure of grape husks which you shall have preserved in jars.  By day turn the cattle out and at night feed twenty-five pounds of hay to each steer.  If hay is short, feed the leaves of the ilex and ivy.[35] Stack the straw of wheat, barley, beans, vetch and lupine, indeed all the grain straws, but pick out and house the best of it.  Scatter your straw with salt and you can then feed it in place of hay.  When in the spring you begin to feed (more heavily to prepare for work), feed a measure of mast or of grape husks, or a measure of ground lupines, and fifteen pounds of hay.  When the clover is ripe, feed that first.  Gather it by hand so that it will bloom a second time, for what you harvest with the sickle blooms no more.  Feed clover until it is dry, then feed vetch and then panic grass, and after the panic grass feed elm leaves.  If you have poplar, mix that with the elm so that the elm may last the longer.  If you have no elm feed oak and fig leaves.

Nothing is more profitable than to take good care of your cattle.

Cattle should not be put out to graze except in winter when they are not worked; for when they eat green stuff they expect it all the time, and it is then necessary to muzzle them while they plough.

Of the care of live stock

(V) The flocks and herds should be well supplied with litter and their feet kept clean.  If litter is short, haul in oak leaves, they will serve as bedding for sheep and cattle.  Beware of scab among the sheep and cattle.  This comes from hunger and exposure to rain.

(LXXII) To prevent the oxen from wearing down their hoofs, anoint the bottom of the hoof with liquid pepper before driving them on the highroad.

(LXXIII) Take care that during the summer the cattle drink only sweet and fresh water.  Their health depends on it.

(XCVI) To prevent scab among sheep, make a mixture of equal parts of well strained amurca,[36] of water in which lupine has been steeped, and of lees of good wine.  After shearing, anoint all the flock with this mixture, and let them sweat profusely for two or three days.  Then dip them in the sea.  If you have no sea water, make salt water and dip then in that.  If you will do this they will suffer no scab, they will have more and better wool and they will not be molested by ticks.

(LXXI) If an ox begins to sicken, give him without delay a raw hen’s egg and make him swallow it whole.  The next day make him drink from a wooden bowl a measure of wine in which has been scraped the head of an onion.  Both the ox and his attendant should do these things fasting and standing upright.

(CII) If a serpent shall bite an ox, or any other quadruped, take a cup of that extract of fennel, which the physicians call smyrnean, and mix it with a measure of old wine.  Inject this through his nostrils and at the same time poultice the wound with hogs’ dung.[37] You can treat a man the same way.