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herd size to four hundred head from much smaller groups ranging from
230 to 312 head prevalent since 1725.^26
Although breeding was promoted by altering herd size, it was
reinforced for human herders through the structure of herd personnel
management, which ultimately reached to Beijing and the Neiwufu.
Results of annual censuses and periodic round-ups brought rewards in
sable, satin, or cloth for exceeding breeding quotas. Punishments of
lashes,fines, or demotions were meted out for failing to meet quotas.
Complicated methods to standardize surpluses and shortfalls, calculated
from 1725 in“units”(fen)offive hundred and two hundred animals,
respectively, were imposed to facilitate evaluation of herder husbandry.^27
This system was the primary state instrument to compel humans and
animals to conform to imperial pastoralism.
The effects of this system appear in relatively precise measurements
of livestock vital statistics, as in the data ofTable 7. Sheepflocks grazing
in the Dariganga and Shangdu/Dabsun Nuur pasture complexes can
be tracked over a twenty-one-year period of relatively completefigures.
Theseflocks were the largest concentrations of state pasture livestock and
statutorily set at 210 , 000 head organized in 410 flocks in Shangdu/
Dabsun Nuur and 100 , 000 head, probably in 80 flocks, in Dariganga.^28
Thefigures inTable 8 reveal that these statutory norms were rarely
achieved. During this period overall Shangdu/Dabsun Nuurflocks aver-
aged 169 , 764 head, or 19 percent below their official strength, and
Darigangaflocks averaged 65 , 260 head, or almost 35 percent below their
official strength. Theflocks managed an average annual growth rate for
this twenty-one-year period of only 1. 2 percent, although thisfigure does
not represent reproduction alone. Largeflock declines during 1753 – 54 ,
for example, occurred mainly because of transfers of 105 , 000 head to
army encampments. Direct comparison of birth and mortalityfigures
suggests a much larger increase of 5 percent on average.^29
Livestock populations could alsofluctuate wildly in response to the
steppe ecology. When the population of sixteen mare camel herds dropped
almost 43 percent from 1730 to 1736 in Shangdu/Dabsun Nuur, Mongol
herders soon complained that“the local water and grasslands were not
suited to”camel breeding. The camels were duly sent back to better
pastures in Dariganga, where they had been productively grazing up to
1732. In this instance, pastoralism could not adapt sufficiently to the
Shangdu/Dabsun Nuur grasslands, which may have been overgrazed,
although drought and disease were also factors.^30 The only solution under
such conditions was new space, rather than intensifying use of existing
124 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
