Agricultural History Review, Volume 73 Part 2 (2025), pp. 179–207

The present article considers the bio-ecological crisis of the 1310s in England and Wales from the perspective of livestock health and disease, both enzootic and epizootic. It shows that the short-term anomaly of the same decade created a shortage of fodder, which, in turn, compromised the well-being of local herds and flocks, exposing them to various pathogens and culminating in epizootic disease. Importantly, it is argued that the impact of the crisis was, in some instances, passed through a generation of animal cohorts, whereby the survivors of earlier crises would develop into weaker animals and pass their genes to their offspring. A close analysis of the available sources reveals a complex chain of interconnected and intergenerational crises of the early fourteenth century, between the disaster of 1314–17 and the Black Death of 1348–50, affecting both animals and humans. This stresses the importance of epigenetics as a major factor in the bio-ecological crisis of the fourteenth century and calls into further interdisciplinary exploration of this hitherto unstudied phenomenon.