Animal Husbandry

Animal husbandry is Controlled cultivation, management, and production of domestic animals, including improvement of the qualities considered desirable by humans by means of breeding.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, 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.

Major changes took place in the Columbian exchange when Old World livestock were brought to the New World, and then in the British Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century, when livestock breeds like the Dishley Longhorn cattle and Lincoln Longwool sheep were rapidly improved by agriculturalists such as Robert Bakewell to yield more meat, milk, and wool. A wide range of other species such as horse, water buffalo, llama, rabbit and guinea pig are used as livestock in some parts of the world. Insect farming, as well as aquaculture of fish, molluscs, and crustaceans, is widespread. Modern animal husbandry relies on production systems adapted to the type of land available. Subsistence farming is being superseded by intensive animal farming in the more developed parts of the world, where for example beef cattle are kept in high density feedlots, and thousands of chickens may be raised in broiler houses or batteries. On poorer soil such as in uplands, animals are often kept more extensively, and may be allowed to roam widely, foraging for themselves.

Most livestock are herbivores, except for pigs and chickens which are omnivores. 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. Pigs and poultry cannot digest the cellulose in forage, and require other high-protein foods.Animal husbandry is a branch of agriculture concerned with the domestication of, care for, and breeding of animals such as dogs, cattle, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, and other like creatures. Animal husbandry began in the so-called Neolithic Revolution around 10,000 years ago but may have begun much earlier. It has been speculated that human beings used fire to cook food 1.5 million years ago, but the only archaeological evidence obtained thus far sets the date of the use of fire for cooking at 12,500 years ago as indicated by the discovery of clay cooking pots in East Asia and Mesopotamia.

Domestication

Shortly after this date, evidence of domesticated animal bones left over from human social gatherings such as dinners emerges; said bones having been discovered in excavations of fire pits in ancient kitchens. Though domestication of animals was probably common earlier, it is certain that goats and sheep were domesticated throughout Asia by 8000 BCE. Wheat was domesticated and in wide use in Mesopotamia by 7700 BCE, goats by 7000 BCE, sheep by 6700 BCE, and pigs by 6500 BCE. By the time of the settlement of the first Mesopotamian city of Eridu in 5400 BCE, animal husbandry was widely practiced and domesticated animals used in the workforce (such as in plowing), as pets, and as a food source. Horses were tamed by 4000 BCE and, in time, became an important component in warfare in drawing the great chariots of the various nation-states. Eventually, elephants, tigers, and lions were employed on the battlefield; particularly in the latter cases of the Persian campaigns, in Indian warfare in resistance to Alexander the Great, and, most famously, by during the Punic Wars by Hannibal of Carthage against the Romans.

THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS ALLOWED FOR THE BUILDING OF PERMANENT SETTLEMENTS.