The key word here is << highlands >>. You seem to be having in mind a place that's very close to the British islands. I could agree with you if that was always the case. The problem is that there are plenty of places that have nothing in common with it. The RW examples I know best are my country, Portugal, Spain and the north of Africa. These are places of << much rougher terrain >>. You don't have here the extensive raizing fields of Scotland or Irland. The country is dry, hot and rocky. These are places where you find almost no sheep, and where cattle is used mainly for work, not for meat. Poor people don't have the resources to herd other animals besides goats. This is IMO the kind of situation you would find in western and north-western Prax near the Rockwood mountains. IMO the barbarians there will herd goats because they can't herd sheep or cattle.
> So you don't actually *need* to keep goats if they are more trouble
> than they're worth - as they will be if they have the habit of dropping
> little baby broos around after them.
In the situation I just described goats certainly are not << more trouble than they're worth >>. What you do is to be much more careful when dealing with wild goats and to keep a better wach on your goat herd. In such a situation herding is a work for men, not for children, for Orlanthy, not for Voriofy.
>> If they suspected that broos had already infested the goats they would
>> kill them. But the best way to avoid the problem is by killing the broos
>> first.
> No, the best way to avoid the problem is to kill the goats. It's much
> easier to kill a goat than a broo.
I must repeat myself: the problem is not the sheep, is the broos: you can
kill all the goats you want to, if the broos are still there, you are still
in danger. You can configure two scenarios:
a) The human community is strong enough to erradicate the broos; killing
goats is a mean to be used if necessary (like killing dogs with rabies or
suspected of rabies - you don't kil all the dogs) but there is no point in
killing an useful animal if you know it is clean or can confirm safely if
it is clean.
b) The human community is not strong enough to erradicate the broos. All
the community can expect is to control them. The most likely result of
killing goats is that the broos will attack more often the humans (if they
don't have the goats to breed with, who else can become the object of their
<< passionate attentions >> ?).
> the best way to avoid the problem is to kill the goats. It's much
> easier to kill a goat than a broo. While it doesn't prevent you from
being
> marauded by sheep-broo and cattle-broo, there will be less of them
> overall which is a big help for what is (in the long term) relatively
little
> effort on your part.
You can't be serious! Now, you don't have savage sheep or cattle. These are domestic animals. If they are infested by broos it means that broos are able to enter human surroundings. Any community where this happens is in big trouble. If you find sheep-broos or cattle-broos it must mean that the broo fathers killed the owners of the sheep or cow before raping the animals. This is not a situation where you can simply wait and see. That's the kind of moment when you would ring all bels and prepare to the dirtiest of all wars: the war with chaos.
Best,
Sergio
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