The bull impregnates the cow at a single mount, and mounts with such vigour as to weigh down the cow; if his effort be unsuccessful, the cow must be allowed an interval of twenty days before being again submitted. Bulls of mature age decline to mount the same cow several times on one day, except, by the way, at considerable intervals. Young bulls by reason of their vigour are enabled to mount the same cow several times in one day, and a good many cows besides. The bull is the least salacious of male animals.... The victor among the bulls is the one that mounts the females; when he gets exhausted by his amorous efforts, his beaten antagonist sets on him and very often gets the better of the conflict. The bull and the cow are about a year old when it is possible for them to have commerce with chance of offspring: as a rule, however, they are about twenty months old, but it is universally allowed that they are capable in this respect at the age of two years. The cow goes with calf for nine months, and she calves in the tenth month; some maintain that they go in calf for ten months, to the very day. A calf delivered before the times here specified is an abortion and never lives, however little premature its birth may have been, as its hooves are weak and imperfect. The cow as a rule bears but one calf, very seldom two; she submits to the bull and bears as long as she lives.
Cows live for about fifteen years, and the bulls too, if they have been castrated; but some live for twenty years or even more, if their bodily constitutions be sound. The herdsmen tame the castrated bulls, and give them an office in the herd analogous to the office of the bell-wether in a flock; and these bulls live to an exceptionally advanced age, owing to their exemption from hardship and to their browsing on pasture of good quality. The bull is in fullest vigour when five years old, which leads the critics to commend Homer for applying to the bull the epithets of 'five-year-old', or 'of nine seasons', which epithets are alike in meaning. The ox sheds his teeth at the age of two years, not all together but just as the horse sheds his. When the animal suffers from podagra it does not shed the hoof, but is subject to a painful swelling in the feet. The milk of the cow is serviceable after parturition, and before parturition there is no milk at all. The milk that first presents itself becomes as hard as stone when it clots; this result ensues unless it be previously diluted with water. Oxen younger than a year old do not copulate unless under circumstances of an unnatural and portentous kind: instances have been recorded of copulation in both sexes at the age of four months. Kine in general begin to submit to the male about the month of Thargelion or of Scirophorion; some, however, are capable of conception right on to the autumn. When kine in large numbers receive the bull and conceive, it is looked upon as prognostic of rain and stormy weather. Kine herd together like mares, but in lesser degree.
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In the case of horses, the stallion and the mare are first fitted for breeding purposes when two years old. Instances, however, of such early maturity are rare, and their young are exceptionally small and weak; the ordinary age for sexual maturity is three years, and from that age to twenty the two sexes go on improving in the quality of their offspring. The mare carries her foal for eleven months, and casts it in the twelfth. It is not a fixed number of days that the stallion takes to impregnate the mare; it may be one, two, three, or more. An ass in covering will impregnate more expeditiously than a stallion. The act of intercourse with horses is not laborious as it is with oxen. In both sexes the horse is the most salacious of animals next after the human species. The breeding faculties of the younger horses may be stimulated beyond their years if they be supplied with good feeding in abundance. The mare as a rule bears only one foal; occasionally she has two, but never more. Amare has been known to cast two mules; but such a circumstance was regarded as unnatural and portentous.
The horse then is first fitted for breeding purposes at the age of two and a half years, but achieves full sexual maturity when it has ceased to shed teeth, except it be naturally infertile; it must be added, however, that some horses have been known to impregnate the mare while the teeth were in process of shedding.
The horse has forty teeth. It sheds its first set of four, two from the upper jaw and two from the lower, when two and a half years old. After a year's interval, it sheds another set of four in like manner, and another set of four after yet another year's interval;after arriving at the age of four years and six months it sheds no more. An instance has occurred where a horse shed all his teeth at once, and another instance of a horse shedding all his teeth with his last set of four; but such instances are very rare. It consequently happens that a horse when four and a half years old is in excellent condition for breeding purposes.
The older horses, whether of the male or female, are the more generatively productive. Horses will cover mares from which they have been foaled and mares which they have begotten; and, indeed, a troop of horses is only considered perfect when such promiscuity of intercourse occurs. Scythians use pregnant mares for riding when the embryo has turned rather soon in the womb, and they assert that thereby the mothers have all the easier delivery. Quadrupeds as a rule lie down for parturition, and in consequence the young of them all come out of the womb sideways. The mare, however, when the time for parturition arrives, stands erect and in that posture casts its foal.
