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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 4296705" data-attributes="member: 30001">The evidence of chickens is there in the books I have - I recall a comment made about how eggs were a staple for the recipes in the cookbooks of the upper classes, eggs and chickens were the form of many customary rent agreements with lords.  In fact, in the section dealing with the average livestock ownership, I believe a comment was made that stats on chickens were impossible to keep because it wasn't as nearly as well documented.  Livestock is pretty common in urban areas AFAIK because there isn't such a distinction between urban and rural - most of the anecdotes involves pigs that I recall.So I hope you aren't too hard on the "great experts on history" - especially since space doesn't really permit me to give you a full accounting of every possible bit of useful information for the subject.  I'd be curious, if your basing your "great gaping holes statement" on stuff you've read, which books you suspect present a less-than-complete picture.  The books I have have been pretty good about spelling out their sources of information, and outlining some of the possible shortcomings as a result (ex. - they would point out why the proportion of illegal venison that was consumed was difficult/impossible to acertain from the archaeology because of the likelihood that deer were stripped of their meat out in the woods and so the bones would not be found in village trash-heaps)The best historians IMO are pretty good about knowing what it is that they don't know.  I've been selecting out snippets based on what I thought would help.Also - an effort has been made to gather statistics about the details of farming in some cases - using the technology of the period where possible.  This is gone into in a little detail in my "Daily Life on the English Manor" book - but the details involve studies and historians and things that I'm not familiar with.  One would hope that a percentage of historians grew up on farms and could lend their experiences to the peer-reviewed conclusions in the field.</blockquote>

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