Cattle Industry

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CATTLE INDUSTRY

Cattle have been domesticated for thousands of years. Since approximately 4000 b.c. cattle have been utilized for their meat, blood, milk, and skin, and have also been used as draft animals. The two most prevalent species of cattle are Bos taurus, found mainly in the Western world, and Bos indicus, which includes the Brahman cattle found in India and other Middle and Far Eastern countries. Cattle are ruminants, eating grasses and grains.

The modern cattle industry had its earliest beginnings in eighteenth century Europe. Farmers began to selectively breed cattle to try to increase the quantity or quality of their cattle products, or to produce cattle that were hardier and better suited to their geographic area. An Englishman, Robert Bakewell (1725–1795), is credited as being the first to promote selective animal breeding, a successful practice which continued throughout the twentieth century. Eventually, cattle societies and registries were formed to keep track of new breeds of purebred cattle. Crossing two or more breeds together was also done to improve specific attributes. In the late 1990s, the numerous popular cattle breeds for producing beef included the Charolais, Hereford, Angus, Shorthorn, and Brahman. Dairy cattle breeds included the Holstein, Jersey, and Guernsey.

Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) introduced cattle to the New World in 1494, on his second voyage. Early colonists brought cows to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1611 and to the Plymouth Colony in 1624. Most of these cattle were English Shorthorn, a breed used to produce several types of cattle products. Pioneers traveling west often used oxen to pull wagons and plow, and herded cattle along as well. By the mid-nineteenth century, cattle production was an important industry in the Mid-West, and by the 1880s it had expanded westward to the Pacific.

It was during this time that the cowboy came into being in the American West. Cowboys were responsible for gathering cattle and moving them from place to place to graze on public lands. They also put together long cattle drives, where cattle from the Southern states were driven to markets for shipment by rail north for slaughter. Prices for beef were very competitive in the Northern States because the end of the American Civil War (1861–1865) had caused a shortage. Most of the large cattle drives occurred from 1866 to 1886. Driving cattle was a dangerous and difficult job. Cowboys faced the prospects of stampedes, lightening storms, and other hazards such as encounters with outlaws, Native Americans, and farmers who did not want cattle to pass near their herds, fearful of the deadly cattle disease known as "Texas fever." According to Cecil K. Hutson in a study of the Texas fever in Kansas, "collectively, with blizzards, drought, barbed wire, railroad expansion, settlement, foreign embargoes, and a more sophisticated urban palate, this cattle plague brought an end to the era of the long cattle drives."

Beginning in 1886, two years of severe drought interspersed with freezing winters put most of the remaining cattle ranchers out of business. After 1888, barbed wire fences prevented the open grazing that had been allowed previously. Cattle were more and more often contained to individual ranches, where windmills drew water for the herds. This was the beginning of the modern cattle industry in the United States.

In 1995, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) listed the United States as fourth in the world in the number of cattle and buffalo. The production of beef had become a systematized process in the United States. Cattle had to be raised and fattened, then shipped to slaughterhouses for processing; distributors would then sell and transport the meat to supermarkets and restaurants for retail sale to consumers. According to the USDA, in 1994 cattle products were "the leading commodity in 18 states." The January 1, 1997 Cattle Inventory Report, NDSS/USDA, stated that Texas was the 1995 leader in income from cattle, with Kansas second, and Nebraska a close third. The amount of beef produced in the United States rose steadily from 1993 to 1996.

Cattle production in the 1990s was the single largest contributor to American agriculture, with sales accounting for over $30 billion in 1995 alone. America was also a leading exporter of beef and cattle products, second in the world only to Argentina. In 1995, about sixty-four percent of all exported beef went to Japan, making the American cattle industry a key player in reducing the international trade deficit.

See also: Agriculture Industry, Barbed Wire, Cattle Drives, Cow Town, Cowboy, Westward Expansion