Ranch

Ranching is also a method used to raise less common livestock such as horses, elk, American bison, ostrich, emu, and alpaca.

Most working ranches do not cater to guests, though they may allow private hunters or outfitters onto their property to hunt native wildlife.

a few struggling smaller operations have added some dude ranch features such as horseback rides, cattle drives, and guided hunting to bring in additional income.

[15][16] In Spain it retained its military origin, being defined as: the group of people, typically soldiers, who eat together in a circle; a mess hall.

“Rancho” in Spain is also the: “food prepared for several people who eat in a circle and from the same pot.”[17] It was also defined as a family reunion to talk any particular business.

[21] In South America, specifically in Argentina,[22] Uruguay, Chile, Brasil, Bolivia and Paraguay, the term is applied to a modest humble rural home or dwelling, a cottage; while in Venezuela it’s an improvised, illegal dwelling, generally poorly built or not meeting basic habitability requirements; a shanty or slum house.

The people who are employees of the rancher and involved in handling livestock are called a number of terms, including cowhand, ranch hand, and cowboy.

Instead, livestock raising, predominantly sheep,[38][39][40] became the solution to repopulate the land as the animals could easily be moved to a safer place in case of an attack.

Called caballeros villanos (knights-villein) or pastores guerreros (warrior shepherds),[42] these were the highest class of peasants and were allowed to have a horse.

They, on horseback, could defend the frontier from attacks, easily herd the animals to a safer place, and could do their own raids on Muslim lands.

[49] The origins of what we know today as ranching in North America date back to the 16th century when the Spaniards introduced cattle and horses to Mexico.

[52] The Franciscan friar, Antonio de Ciudad Real, who accompanied friar Alonso de Ponce to New Spain in 1584, argued that the reason why cattle was so abundant in the Province of Mexico was because it was easier to produce and raise, at less cost and with less work, because pasturelands were abundant, the climate was temperate and there were no wolves or other predators to prey upon them as in Spain, multiplying so much that it seemed to be native to the land, that many men were able to brand more than 30 thousand calves a year.

Initially, a generalized common grazing regime was established, in which all vacant land was free and open to all, as was the stubble after the harvest.

This regime allowed cattle to multiply in a semi-wild state, with minimal intervention from man, diverging, once again, from Spanish tradition.

The first sites or sitios intended for cattle and other livestock were called Estancias (stays, stations), and were given in the form of grants upon verification of the occupation or "purchase" made from the Indians.

[71] Prior to the establishment of rancho as a cattle-farm, the term seems to have been used to refer to provisional houses, like those of the indigenous people, or a camping site.

Similarly, the term “estancia” appears to have been used originally to denote a point where herdsmen and their herds finally came to rest,[72] or as the Spanish-Mexican horseman and historian, Don Juan Suárez de Peralta, described it in 1580: “the houses where the vaqueros gather or assemble, where they have corrals to enclose some cattle to brand and mark.”[73] The rancho under the Mexican definition, as we know it today, would emerge sometime in the 17th century, being defined as: “A small hacienda, with a small amount of land for cultivation, a small workforce, and a proportionate amount of tools and equipment; different from the estancia or big hacienda which has more land, a bigger workforce, more oxen, and more tools and equipment.”[74] This definition from 1687, shows that both terms, estancia and hacienda, were synonymous; apparently the term estancia begins to fall into disuse in the country, being replaced by the term hacienda, sometime in the early 18th century.

The hacienda “San Juan Evangelista del Mezquite” owned by Felipe de Barragán in the same region was 450,000 hectares or 1.2 million acres at its height in the 18th century.

[85] One of the largest cattle-barons in 16th century Mexico was Don Diego de Ibarra, governor of Nueva Vizcaya, who in the year 1586 had branded more than 33,000 calves at his Trujillo hacienda[86] in Zacatecas where, at the time of his death in 1600, owned more than 130,000 head of cattle and more than 4000 horses.

[87] His successor as governor, Don Rodrigo del Rio de la Loza, had branded at his Poanas hacienda more than 42,000 calves that same year.

[103] The prairie and desert lands of what today is Mexico and the western United States were well-suited to "open range" grazing.

Likewise, cattle and other livestock were simply turned loose in the spring after their young were born and allowed to roam with little supervision and no fences, then rounded up in the fall, with the mature animals driven to market and the breeding stock brought close to the ranch headquarters for greater protection in the winter.

Beginning with the settlement of Texas in the 1840s, and expansion both north and west from that time, through the Civil War and into the 1880s, ranching dominated western economic activity.

This created some conflict, as increasing numbers of farmers needed to fence off fields to prevent cattle and sheep from eating their crops.

Cattle stocked on the open range created a tragedy of the commons as each rancher sought increased economic benefit by grazing too many animals on public lands that "nobody" owned.

However, being a non-native species, the grazing patterns of ever-increasing numbers of cattle slowly reduced the quality of the rangeland, in spite of the simultaneous massive slaughter of American bison that occurred.

About 1812, John Parker, a sailor who had jumped ship and settled in the islands, received permission from Kamehameha to capture the wild cattle and develop a beef industry.

The Hawaiian style of ranching originally included capturing wild cattle by driving them into pits dug in the forest floor.

When Liholiho's brother, Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III), visited California, then still a part of Mexico, he was impressed with the skill of the Mexican vaqueros.

However, ranch-type properties are not seen to any significant degree in the rest of western Europe, where there is far less land area and sufficient rainfall allows the raising of cattle on much smaller farms.