The older ones also will fatten if they be fed up after
an incision has been made into their hide, and air blown thereinto.
Cattle will fatten also on barley in its natural state or on barley
finely winnowed, or on sweet food, such as figs, or pulp from the
wine-press, or on elm-leaves. But nothing is so fattening as the
heat of the sun and wallowing in warm waters. If the horns of young
cattle be smeared with hot wax, you may mold them to any shape you
please, and cattle are less subject to disease of the hoof if you
smear the horny parts with wax, pitch, or olive oil. Herded cattle
suffer more when they are forced to change their pasture ground by
frost than when snow is the cause of change. Cattle grow all the
more in size when they are kept from sexual commerce over a number
of years; and it is with a view to growth in size that in Epirus the
so-called Pyrrhic kine are not allowed intercourse with the bull until
they are nine years old; from which circumstance they are nicknamed
the 'unbulled' kine. Of these Pyrrhic cattle, by the way, they say
that there are only about four hundred in the world, that they are the
private property of the Epirote royal family, that they cannot
thrive out of Epirus, and that people elsewhere have tried to rear
them, but without success.
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