Animal husbandry
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.
Ruminants like cattle and sheep are adapted to feed on grass; they can forage outdoors or may be fed entirely or in part on rations richer in energy and protein, such as pelleted cereals.
[7] Fossilised chicken bones dated to 5040 BC have been found in northeastern China, far from where their wild ancestors lived in the jungles of tropical Asia, but archaeologists believe that the original purpose of domestication was for the sport of cockfighting.
[3] In ancient Egypt, cattle were the most important livestock, and sheep, goats, and pigs were also kept; poultry including ducks, geese, and pigeons were captured in nets and bred on farms, where they were force-fed with dough to fatten them.
"[14] For example, the royal manor of Earley in Berkshire, one of thousands of villages recorded in the book, had in 1086 "2 fisheries worth [paying tax of] 7s and 6d [each year] and 20 acres of meadow [for livestock].
[21] Traditionally, animal husbandry was part of the subsistence farmer's way of life, producing not only the food needed by the family but also the fuel, fertiliser, clothing, transport and draught power.
[25] In the uplands of the United Kingdom, sheep are turned out on the fells in spring and graze the abundant mountain grasses untended, being brought to lower altitudes late in the year, with supplementary feeding being provided in winter.
[26] In rural locations, pigs and poultry can obtain much of their nutrition from scavenging, and in African communities, hens may live for months without being fed, and still produce one or two eggs a week.
The ingredients for the animals' rations can be grown on the farm or can be bought, in the form of pelleted or cubed, compound foodstuffs specially formulated for the different classes of livestock, their growth stages and their specific nutritional requirements.
For example, in 2007, a typical broiler chicken at eight weeks old was 4.8 times as heavy as a bird of similar age in 1957,[36] while in the thirty years to 2007, the average milk yield of a dairy cow in the United States nearly doubled.
[36] Good husbandry, proper feeding, and hygiene are the main contributors to animal health on the farm, bringing economic benefits through maximised production.
[41] Animals living under intensive conditions are prone to internal and external parasites; increasing numbers of sea lice are affecting farmed salmon in Scotland.
At one time, antibiotics were routinely added to certain compound foodstuffs to promote growth, but this practice is now frowned on in many countries because of the risk that it may lead to antimicrobial resistance in livestock and in humans.
An outbreak of Nipah virus in Malaysia in 1999 was traced back to pigs becoming ill after contact with fruit-eating flying foxes, their faeces and urine.
[48][49][50] Some authorities use much broader definitions to include fish in aquaculture, micro-livestock such as rabbits and rodents like guinea pigs, as well as insects from honey bees to crickets raised for human consumption.
[51] Animals are raised for a wide variety of products, principally meat, wool, milk, and eggs, but also including tallow, isinglass and rennet.
Other animals used to a lesser extent for this purpose include sheep, goats, camels, buffaloes, yaks, reindeer, horses and donkeys.
Whereas in the past cattle had multiple functions, modern dairy cow breeding has resulted in specialised Holstein Friesian-type animals that produce large quantities of milk economically.
[57] Meat, mainly from farmed animals, is a major source of dietary protein and essential nutrients around the world, averaging about 8% of man's energy intake.
[60] The actual types eaten depend on local preferences, availability, cost and other factors, with cattle, sheep, pigs and goats being the main species involved.
Some desirable traits of animals raised for meat include fecundity, hardiness, fast growth rate, ease of management and high food conversion efficiency.
This is the most labour saving and economical method of egg production but has been criticised on animal welfare grounds as the birds are unable to exhibit their normal behaviours.
[64] In the developed world, the majority of the poultry reared for meat is raised indoors in big sheds, with automated equipment under environmentally controlled conditions.
[65] A similar rearing system is usually used for turkeys, which are less hardy than chickens, but they take longer to grow and are often moved on to separate fattening units to finish.
Whole bays, lakes or ponds may be devoted to aquaculture, or the farmed animal may be retained in cages (fish), artificial reefs, racks or strings (shellfish).
[72] In more advanced economies, where modern strains of domestic bee have been selected for docility and productiveness, various designs of hive are used which enable the combs to be removed for processing and extraction of honey.
[90] Habitat is destroyed by clearing forests and converting land to grow feed crops and for grazing, while predators and herbivores are frequently targeted because of a perceived threat to livestock profits; for example, animal husbandry causes up to 91% of the deforestation in the Amazon region.
The books often depict happy animals free to roam in attractive countryside, a picture completely at odds with the realities of the impersonal, mechanized activities involved in modern intensive farming.
[102] Pigs, for example, appear in several of Beatrix Potter's "little books", as Piglet in A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories, and somewhat more darkly (with a hint of animals going to slaughter) as Babe in Dick King-Smith's The Sheep-Pig, and as Wilbur in E. B.
Many of these books are completely anthropomorphic, dressing farm animals in clothes and having them walk on two legs, live in houses, and perform human activities.
