In this article we will discuss about the farm animals that are found in Australia.
The First Farm Animals:
We do not know very much about the first men who lived together in villages instead of living by themselves in family groups. All we do know is that somewhere about 15 000 years before Christ, while most men were still wandering hunters, groups of people in Western Asia or Northern Africa began to settle down and live together in communities.
To be able to do this they needed a supply of food close at hand, and so instead of wandering about gathering seeds and hunting animals, they began to plant their own crops. They also learned how to tame wild animals and make use of them.
The dog, we think was the first animal to be tamed by man because it probably helped him to do his hunting. The first farm animals to be domesticated were cattle, and all through man’s later history cattle have been the most important farm animals, providing him with meat, milk, butter, hides, manure, and the power to pull implements. Sheep, pigs and donkeys were kept in very early times, while the horse was tamed much later, followed by the camel, the elephant and other animals.
We may wonder why, of all the animals in the world, early man usually chose cattle, sheep, pigs and horses, and why these have remained the chief kinds of livestock used in agriculture. An animal will only be domesticated if it will breed in captivity, if it is fairly manageable, and if it can be of some use to man, and these are the reasons why some animals have never been used in agriculture.
At first, man did not know how to make the best use of the animals he kept; for instance, the Chinese used cattle to pull ploughs long before they learned to milk them.
In the ruins of the great cities of ancient Egypt and Babylonia we see wall drawings showing donkeys carrying burdens; cattle, sheep and goats being driven along; and later on, horses pulling chariots. Although the Bible mentions flocks of sheep and goats, these were not run on proper pastures, but ate grass on rough hillsides. Shepherds drove away wild animals and moved the flocks to new grass.
And so we see that although great numbers of animals were kept in those far-off days, men did not know how to feed or breed them properly, or how to look after them, nor did they realise the uses of animal manures in keeping the crop lands fertile. The Greeks and Romans made great use of farm animals, and cattle became so important that they were used as the standard of value. The Latin word for money is pecunia, coming from the word pecus, which means cattle.
The keeping of farm animals did not change much for thousands of years, and in England during the Middle Ages husbandry was much the same as it had been in the days of the Roman Empire. However sheep were the most important stock in England because they provided wool for clothing.
Nevertheless the animals themselves had begun to change—the sheep in one district began to look different from those fifty miles away. This always happens when groups of animals are kept separate from one another and are not allowed to mix and breed freely.
But there were no distinct breeds of animals yet, for all groups and flocks were variable. The cattle of Lincoln, for instance, would have been of varying colours, shapes and sizes. Yet if we had been able to travel about England in those times we would have noticed that there were a lot of sheep with curly horns in Dorset, a lot of black-faced sheep in the north of England, and a lot of red cattle in the herds of Lincoln.
The Beginning of the English Breeds:
There was great progress in English agriculture in the eighteenth century. Early in this century much of the farm land was still being run on the “open field” system, and there was not much chance of improving animals when all sheep, cattle and other stock were allowed to run together on the “commons”.
Gradually more and more of the land was enclosed or fenced off so that each man could run his own stock separated from those of his neighbours, and this made it possible to breed for improvement.
Robert Bakewell of Dishley (1725-95) was the first man to begin the proper improvement of livestock by breeding. He began to select sheep with blocky bodies, fine bone and rapid growth, and by always mating the “best to the best”, he soon produced the Leicestershire breed. These animals all had the same appearance, and because they were fine sheep, farmers were anxious to buy this breed.
Bakewell also improved cattle and horses, and his methods were so successful that other breeders began to copy him. Within a hundred years all farm livestock began to show marked improvement. Instead of very mixed flocks and herds, breeds or groups of similar animals began to appear.
Modern Breeds and Strains:
This process of looking for animals of a certain type and breeding from them to produce new uniform breeds is still going on. The American Santa Gertrudis breed of cattle is an example of a recent breed. There is no doubt whatever that animals will be still further improved and that quite new breeds will be produced in the future.
Many of the special breeds of livestock formed in England and Europe have been brought to Australia, but there are two very important facts to be remembered about these breeds.
When a breed of animal is developed in one country and taken to another country, the breed will change after a while. For instance, if a breed coming from a country with a high rainfall and good pastures is taken to a hot dry country with poor pastures, the animals will slowly become better able to live on poor pastures. One reason for this is that the animals which cannot live under hard conditions will die off.
Thus the Merino breed of sheep has changed very greatly since it was brought to Australia, and Australian Tamworth pigs, Australian Shorthorn cattle and Australian Border Leicester sheep are not quite the same as those bred in England or the Argentine. The farm animals in Australia are probably better suited to our hot dry climate. Therefore we should be careful about bringing animals which may not be suited to our climate from other countries. Such imported animals may cause our own breeds to be less able to stand up to drought, poor pastures and heat.
Another point about breeds is that none of them are really “pure”. Every so-called pure breed contains some good animals, some which are average, and some which are poor producers. It is quite useful for pupils to learn the characteristics of breeds as long as they remember that these are often only average production characteristics. Quite often the breed of an animal is not as important as its strain.
If it comes from a high-producing strain, then it probably has the characteristics of the breed at its best; but just because an animal is a Jersey, a Corriedale or an Aberdeen Angus, it does not mean that it will be as good as the better animals of those breeds, or even as good as the average animals.
Animal husbandry deals with the most up-to-date ways of caring for farm livestock. Before we can study these things we must first know something about the bodies of animals, how the parts of the body work, and we must also learn some general rules about feeding and breeding livestock.