Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, management, production, nutrition, selective breeding, and the raising of livestock. Husbandry has a long history, starting with the Neolithic Revolution when animals were first domesticated, from around 13,000 BC onwards, predating farming of the first crops. By the time of early civilisations such as ancient Egypt, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs were being raised on farms.
A herder is a pastoral worker responsible for the care and management of a herd or flock of domestic animals, usually on open pasture. It is particularly associated with nomadic or transhumant management of stock, or with common land grazing. The work is often done either on foot or mounted.
Herding is the act of bringing individual animals together into a group (herd), maintaining the group, and moving the group from place to place—or any combination of those. Herding can refer either to the process of animals forming herds in the wild, or to human intervention forming herds for some purpose. While the layperson uses the term "herding" to describe this human intervention, most individuals involved in the process term it mustering, "working stock", or droving.
A herding dog, also known as a stock dog or working dog, is a type of dog that either has been trained in herding or belongs to breeds that are developed for herding. A dog specifically trained to herd sheep is known as a sheep dog or shepherd dog.
The American Pygmy is an American breed of achondroplastic (dwarf) goat. It is small, compact and stockily built. Like the Nigerian Dwarf, it derives from the West African Dwarf group of breeds of West Africa. Between 1930 and 1960, animals of this type were imported to the United States for use either as zoo animals or for research; some were later kept and bred as companion animals and established as a breed in 1975.
The Nigerian Dwarf is a Nigerian breed of dwarf goat. Like the American Pygmy Goat, it derives from the West African Dwarf group of breeds of West Africa.
An ear tag is a plastic or metal object used for identification of domestic livestock and other animals. If the ear tag uses Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) technology it is referred to as an electronic ear tag. Electronic ear tags conform to international standards ISO 11784 and ISO 11785 working at 134.2 kHz, as well as ISO/IEC 18000-6C operating in the UHF spectrum. There are other non-standard systems such as Destron working at 125 kHz. Although there are many shapes of ear tags, the main types in current use are as follows:
The Spanish goat, also called the brush goat or scrub goat, came originally from Spain via Mexico to the USA. It is now a meat and brush-clearing type found widely in the United States. In the Southeast and elsewhere, they are often referred to as "wood" (Florida), "brush" or "briar", "hill" (Virginia), and "scrub" goats. Until recently, these goats were kept mainly for clearing brush and other undesirable plant species from pasture lands. The boer goats have overtaken Spanish goats for meat in the 1980s.
Polled livestock are livestock without horns in species which are normally horned. The term refers to both breeds and strains that are naturally polled through selective breeding and also to naturally horned animals that have been disbudded. Natural polling occurs in cattle, yaks, water buffalo, and goats, and in these animals it affects both sexes equally; in sheep, by contrast, both sexes may be horned, both polled, or only the females polled. The history of breeding polled livestock starts about 6000 years BC.
A livestock guardian dog (LGD) is a dog type bred for the purpose of protecting livestock from predators.
Sheep or domestic sheep are a domesticated, ruminant mammal typically kept as livestock. Although the term sheep can apply to other species in the genus Ovis, in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated sheep. Like all ruminants, sheep are members of the order Artiodactyla, the even-toed ungulates. Numbering a little over one billion, domestic sheep are also the most numerous species of sheep. An adult female is referred to as a ewe, an intact male as a ram, occasionally a tup, a castrated male as a wether, and a young sheep as a lamb.
The goat or domestic goat is a species of domesticated goat-antelope that is mostly kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the family Bovidae, meaning it is closely related to the sheep. There are over 300 distinct breeds of goat. It is one of the oldest domesticated species of animal, according to archaeological evidence that its earliest domestication occurred in Iran at 10,000 calibrated calendar years ago.
A shepherd or sheepherder is a person who tends, herds, feeds, or guards flocks of sheep. Shepherd derives from Old English sceaphierde. Shepherding is one of the world's oldest occupations, it exists in all parts of the globe, and it is an important part of pastoralist animal husbandry.
In Sri Lanka many farmers depend on animal husbandry for their livelihood, but not a large proportion. Therefore, many livestock products have to be imported. The main livestock products in Sri Lanka are milk, meat and eggs. Hides, wools and other products are still not produced within the country. Animal power formerly used in the cultivation of rice and vegetables have been replaced by modern technology to farmlands. However animal husbandry plays an important role in the rural economy for improving the living conditions of farmers in the country.
American Lamancha, or more commonly, simply Lamancha or LaMancha, is a formally recognized breed of dairy goat, first bred in California by Mrs. Eula Fay Frey about 1927. Later she moved the herd to Glide, Oregon for further development. The Lamancha goat is a member of the Capra genus, specifically Capra aegagrus hircus, like all domestic goats.
Murciana, also called Murcian, Murcien, Murciene and Royal Murciana is a dual-purpose breed of goat originally bred in the Murcia province along the Mediterranean coast of southeastern Spain. The main milk-producing goat breed in Spain is a cross between the Murciana and the Granadina goat known as Murciano-granadina goat. Only the latter is officially recognized by the Spanish government, so Murciana goats are considered a variety of such breed.
The business of livestock farming is prominent in the Basque Country (Spain). The climate of this region is ideal for raising cattle and other livestock and is classified as Atlantic, or warm and rainy. The most common breeds of livestock raised in this region include beef cattle, dairy cattle, sheep, goats, and horses. These animals are most often raised in mixed farms, or farms that contain a combination of these types of animals and not just one type exclusively. Although the number of livestock farms notably decreased between the years of 1999 and 2009, the number of animals raised on each remaining farm increased dramatically, as discussed in further detail below. In 2006, there were estimated to be about 19,000 Basque farms that involved the raising of livestock.
Heritage Foods USA is an American heritage meat distribution company with offices in Brooklyn, New York. It was formed in 2001 as the sales and marketing arm of Slow Food USA — a non-profit organization founded by Patrick Martins, dedicated to celebrating regional cuisines and ingredients. The Heritage Turkey Project, which helped double the population of heritage turkeys in the United States and upgraded the Bourbon Red turkey from “rare” to “watch” status on conservation lists, was Heritage Foods USA’s first project aimed at heritage breed preservation. In 2004, it became an independent company selling heritage breed meat to top tiered restaurants and consumers.
Goat farming involves the raising and breeding of domestic goats as a branch of animal husbandry. People farm goats principally for their meat, milk, fibre and skins.
