Texas
Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Geographically located in the South Central region of the country, Texas shares borders with the U. S. states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas to the southwest, while the Gulf of Mexico is to the southeast. Houston is the most populous city in Texas and the fourth largest in the U. S. while San Antonio is the second-most populous in the state and seventh largest in the U. S. Dallas–Fort Worth and Greater Houston are the fourth and fifth largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country, respectively. Other major cities include Austin, the second-most populous state capital in the U. S. and El Paso. Texas is nicknamed "The Lone Star State" to signify its former status as an independent republic, as a reminder of the state's struggle for independence from Mexico; the "Lone Star" can be found on the Texan state seal.
The origin of Texas's name is from the word taysha. Due to its size and geologic features such as the Balcones Fault, Texas contains diverse landscapes common to both the U. S. Southern and Southwestern regions. Although Texas is popularly associated with the U. S. southwestern deserts, less than 10% of Texas's land area is desert. Most of the population centers are in areas of former prairies, grasslands and the coastline. Traveling from east to west, one can observe terrain that ranges from coastal swamps and piney woods, to rolling plains and rugged hills, the desert and mountains of the Big Bend; the term "six flags over Texas" refers to several nations. Spain was the first European country to claim the area of Texas. France held a short-lived colony. Mexico controlled the territory until 1836 when Texas won its independence, becoming an independent Republic. In 1845, Texas joined the union as the 28th state; the state's annexation set off a chain of events that led to the Mexican–American War in 1846.
A slave state before the American Civil War, Texas declared its secession from the U. S. in early 1861, joined the Confederate States of America on March 2nd of the same year. After the Civil War and the restoration of its representation in the federal government, Texas entered a long period of economic stagnation. Four major industries shaped the Texas economy prior to World War II: cattle and bison, cotton and oil. Before and after the U. S. Civil War the cattle industry, which Texas came to dominate, was a major economic driver for the state, thus creating the traditional image of the Texas cowboy. In the 19th century cotton and lumber grew to be major industries as the cattle industry became less lucrative, it was though, the discovery of major petroleum deposits that initiated an economic boom which became the driving force behind the economy for much of the 20th century. With strong investments in universities, Texas developed a diversified economy and high tech industry in the mid-20th century.
As of 2015, it is second on the list of the most Fortune 500 companies with 54. With a growing base of industry, the state leads in many industries, including agriculture, energy and electronics, biomedical sciences. Texas has led the U. S. in state export revenue since 2002, has the second-highest gross state product. If Texas were a sovereign state, it would be the 10th largest economy in the world; the name Texas, based on the Caddo word táyshaʼ "friend", was applied, in the spelling Tejas or Texas, by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves the Hasinai Confederacy, the final -s representing the Spanish plural. The Mission San Francisco de los Tejas was completed near the Hasinai village of Nabedaches in May 1690, in what is now Houston County, East Texas. During Spanish colonial rule, in the 18th century, the area was known as Nuevo Reino de Filipinas "New Kingdom of the Philippines", or as provincia de los Tejas "province of the Tejas" also provincia de Texas, "province of Texas", it was incorporated as provincia de Texas into the Mexican Empire in 1821, declared a republic in 1836.
The Royal Spanish Academy recognizes both spellings and Texas, as Spanish-language forms of the name of the U. S. State of Texas; the English pronunciation with /ks/ is unetymological, based in the value of the letter x in historical Spanish orthography. Alternative etymologies of the name advanced in the late 19th century connected the Spanish teja "rooftile", the plural tejas being used to designate indigenous Pueblo settlements. A 1760s map by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin shows a village named Teijas on Trinity River, close to the site of modern Crockett. Texas is the second-largest U. S. state, with an area of 268,820 square miles. Though 10% larger than France and twice as large as Germany or Japan, it ranks only 27th worldwide amongst country subdivisions by size. If it were an independent country, Texas would be the 40th largest behind Zambia. Texas is in the south central part of the United States of America. Three of its borders are defined by rivers; the Rio Grande forms a natural border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas to the south.
The Red River forms a natural border with Arkansas to the north. The Sabine River forms a natural border with Louisiana to the east; the Texas Panhandle has an eastern border with Oklahoma at 100° W, a northern border with Oklahoma at 36°30' N and a western
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Lake Livingston
Lake Livingston is a reservoir located in the East Texas Piney Woods. Lake Livingston was built, is owned and operated, by the Trinity River Authority of Texas under contract with the City of Houston for water-supply purposes; the lake is the second-largest lake located wholly within the state of Texas. The Livingston Dam, constructed across the Trinity River 7 miles southwest of the city of Livingston is 2.5 miles in length and has an average depth of 55 feet. The lake construction was paid for by the sale of revenue bonds that were to be redeemed with income derived from the sale of water; the dam construction was completed in 1969, by Forrest and Cotton, Incorporated. The cost to build the earthen dam was US$83,996,957. Water stored in the lake is used to supply industrial and agricultural needs in the lower Trinity River Basin and the Houston/Galveston metropolitan area, its significance in the face of the extraordinary growth experienced by this region of the Upper Texas Gulf Coast is tremendous.
A wide range of public and commercial recreation facilities including full service marinas and motel accommodations are located along the shoreline. The City of Houston owns two-thirds of the water rights of the lake, with the other 1/3 remaining under control of the TRA; the earthfill dam was designed by Brown and Root, Incorporated. The dam has a spillway crest elevation of 99 feet above mean sea level; the average base width of the Dam's earthen embankment is 310 feet wide. The spillway is designed and constructed to pass flows of three times the maximum-recorded flow of the river at this site. Lake Livingston has a surface area of 83,000 acres and impounds 1,750,000 acre feet of water at its normal pool elevation of 131 feet above mean sea level; the average depth of the lake is 23 feet with a maximum depth of 90 feet. Lake Livingston has more than 450 miles of shoreline extending into San Jacinto, Polk and Trinity Counties. Lake Livingston was built with no flood control capabilities/flood storage capabilities, because of this all water entering the lake whether it be from rainfall or inflow, must exit the lake as increase intake occurs.
Flow through the dam is controlled by 12 tainter gates in a concrete and steel spillway that has an average depth of 55 feet. Operations of the spillway mirror river flows, so within a relative short period of time of increase of river flow discharge is increased, vice versa. On September 23, 2005, rain and winds from Hurricane Rita caused waves up to 4 feet in height to pound against the Lake Livingston dam; as a result, 11,000 feet of large protective stones, or riprap, was stripped from the upstream face of the dam. To repair the damage the Trinity River Authority lowered the lake's pool level by 4 feet to 127 feet, preventing any further erosion of the exposed earthen embankment; the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the City of Houston footed the $9.6 million repair bill and awarded the repair contract to Archer Western Contractors. Over the course of the repair movement of 72,215 tons of 32 inch rock in 3,183 truckloads and 15,808 tons of eight-inch bedding rock in 687 truckloads was required.
The rock was mined from a quarry in Navarro County near Corsicana. Work was completed by April 28, 2006, but due to severe drought, the lake's regular pool level was not reached until November, 2006. During the 2017 Hurricane Harvey, Lake Livingston reached a level of 133.52 feet above mean sea level and released 28,400 cubic feet of water per second. Joe McKinney's and Michael McCarty's "Lost Girl of the Lake" is a 2012 Bram Stoker Award Finalist from The Horror Writers Association, That takes place at Lake Livingston in the 1960s. Grinning Skull Press, ISBN 0998691291, ISBN 978-0998691299 Lake Livingston was featured on the third episode of the first season of the television show, River Monsters, which airs on Animal Planet; the host, Jeremy Wade, was searching for alligator gar. Trinity River Authority Trinity River Authority of Texas - Lake Livingston Trinity River Authority of Texas - Water supply Lake Livingston from the Handbook of Texas Online U. S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Lake Livingston TexasRiverData.com Lake Livingston Home page Experience Lake Livingston
Electricity
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. In early days, electricity was considered as being not related to magnetism. On, many experimental results and the development of Maxwell's equations indicated that both electricity and magnetism are from a single phenomenon: electromagnetism. Various common phenomena are related to electricity, including lightning, static electricity, electric heating, electric discharges and many others; the presence of an electric charge, which can be either positive or negative, produces an electric field. The movement of electric charges produces a magnetic field; when a charge is placed in a location with a non-zero electric field, a force will act on it. The magnitude of this force is given by Coulomb's law. Thus, if that charge were to move, the electric field would be doing work on the electric charge, thus we can speak of electric potential at a certain point in space, equal to the work done by an external agent in carrying a unit of positive charge from an arbitrarily chosen reference point to that point without any acceleration and is measured in volts.
Electricity is at the heart of many modern technologies, being used for: electric power where electric current is used to energise equipment. Electrical phenomena have been studied since antiquity, though progress in theoretical understanding remained slow until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Practical applications for electricity were few, it would not be until the late nineteenth century that electrical engineers were able to put it to industrial and residential use; the rapid expansion in electrical technology at this time transformed industry and society, becoming a driving force for the Second Industrial Revolution. Electricity's extraordinary versatility means it can be put to an limitless set of applications which include transport, lighting and computation. Electrical power is now the backbone of modern industrial society. Long before any knowledge of electricity existed, people were aware of shocks from electric fish. Ancient Egyptian texts dating from 2750 BCE referred to these fish as the "Thunderer of the Nile", described them as the "protectors" of all other fish.
Electric fish were again reported millennia by ancient Greek and Arabic naturalists and physicians. Several ancient writers, such as Pliny the Elder and Scribonius Largus, attested to the numbing effect of electric shocks delivered by catfish and electric rays, knew that such shocks could travel along conducting objects. Patients suffering from ailments such as gout or headache were directed to touch electric fish in the hope that the powerful jolt might cure them; the earliest and nearest approach to the discovery of the identity of lightning, electricity from any other source, is to be attributed to the Arabs, who before the 15th century had the Arabic word for lightning ra‘ad applied to the electric ray. Ancient cultures around the Mediterranean knew that certain objects, such as rods of amber, could be rubbed with cat's fur to attract light objects like feathers. Thales of Miletus made a series of observations on static electricity around 600 BCE, from which he believed that friction rendered amber magnetic, in contrast to minerals such as magnetite, which needed no rubbing.
Thales was incorrect in believing the attraction was due to a magnetic effect, but science would prove a link between magnetism and electricity. According to a controversial theory, the Parthians may have had knowledge of electroplating, based on the 1936 discovery of the Baghdad Battery, which resembles a galvanic cell, though it is uncertain whether the artifact was electrical in nature. Electricity would remain little more than an intellectual curiosity for millennia until 1600, when the English scientist William Gilbert wrote De Magnete, in which he made a careful study of electricity and magnetism, distinguishing the lodestone effect from static electricity produced by rubbing amber, he coined the New Latin word electricus to refer to the property of attracting small objects after being rubbed. This association gave rise to the English words "electric" and "electricity", which made their first appearance in print in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646. Further work was conducted in the 17th and early 18th centuries by Otto von Guericke, Robert Boyle, Stephen Gray and C. F. du Fay.
In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin conducted extensive research in electricity, selling his possessions to fund his work. In June 1752 he is reputed to have attached a metal key to the bottom of a dampened kite string and flown the kite in a storm-threatened sky. A succession of sparks jumping from the key to the back of his hand showed that lightning was indeed electrical in nature, he explained the paradoxical behavior of the Leyden jar as a device for storing large amounts of electrical charge in terms of electricity consisting of both positive and negative charges. In 1791, Luigi Galvani published his discovery of bioelectromagnetics, demonstrating that electricity was the medium by which neurons passed signals to the muscles. Alessandro Volta's battery, or voltaic pile, of 1800, made from alternating layers of zinc and copper, provided scientists with a more reliable source of electrical energy than the electrostatic machines used; the recognition of electromagnetism, the unity of electric
River source
The source or headwaters of a river or stream is the furthest place in that river or stream from its estuary or confluence with another river, as measured along the course of the river. The United States Geological Survey states that a river's "length may be considered to be the distance from the mouth to the most distant headwater source, or from the mouth to the headwaters of the stream known as the source stream"; as an example of the second definition above, the USGS at times considers the Missouri River as a tributary of the Mississippi River. But it follows the first definition above in using the combined Missouri - lower Mississippi length figure in lists of lengths of rivers around the world. Most rivers have numerous tributaries and change names often; this most identified definition of a river source uses the most distant point in the drainage basin from which water runs year-around, or, alternatively, as the furthest point from which water could flow ephemerally. The latter definition includes sometimes-dry channels and removes any possible definitions that would have the river source "move around" from month to month depending on precipitation or ground water levels.
This definition, from geographer Andrew Johnston of the Smithsonian Institution, is used by the National Geographic Society when pinpointing the source of rivers such as the Amazon or Nile. A definition given by the state of Montana agrees, stating that a river source is never a confluence but is "in a location, the farthest, along water miles, from where that river ends." Under this definition neither a lake nor a confluence of tributaries can be a true river source, though both provide the starting point for the portion of a river carrying a single name. For example, National Geographic and every other geographic authority and atlas define the source of the Nile River not as Lake Victoria's outlet where the name "Nile" first appears, which would reduce the Nile's length by over 900 km, but instead use the source of the largest river flowing into the lake, the Kagera River; the source of the Amazon River has been determined this way though the river changes names numerous times along its course.
However, the source of Thames in England is traditionally reckoned according to the named river Thames rather than its longer tributary, the Churn — although not without contention. When not listing river lengths, alternative definitions may be used; the Missouri River's source is named by some USGS and other federal and state agency sources, following Lewis and Clark's naming convention, as the confluence of the Madison and Jefferson Rivers, rather than the source of its longest tributary. This is contradicted by a US Army Corps of Engineers official on a USGS site who states the most common definition: "Geographers follow the longest tributary to identify the source of rivers and streams. In the case of the Missouri River and Clark would have had to travel to the east...to reach the source"... He states that the Missouri River source is well upstream from Lewis and Clark's confluence, "following the Jefferson River to the Beaverhead River to Red Rock River Red Rock Creek to Hell Roaring Creek."
Sometimes the source of the most remote tributary may be in an area, more marsh-like, in which the "uppermost" or most remote section of the marsh would be the true source. For example, the source of the River Tees is marshland; the furthest stream is often called the headstream. Headwaters are small streams with cool waters because of shade and melted ice or snow, they may be glacial headwaters, waters formed by the melting of glacial ice. Headwater areas are the upstream areas of a watershed, as opposed to the outflow or discharge of a watershed; the river source is but not always on or quite near the edge of the watershed, or watershed divide. For example, the source of the Colorado River is at the Continental Divide separating the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean watersheds of North America. A river is considered a linear geographic feature, with one source. For an example, note how the Mississippi River and Missouri River sources are defined: "Largest Rivers in the United States". United States Geological Survey.
U. S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Mississippi River, Length: 2,340 miles, Source: 47°14′22″N 95°12′29″W U. S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Missouri River, Length: 2,540 miles, Source: 45°55′39″N 111°30′29″W The verb "rise" can be used to express the general region of a river's source, is qualified with an adverbial expression of place. For example: The River Thames rises in Gloucestershire; the White Nile rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa. The word "source", when applied to lakes rather than rivers or streams, refers to the lake's inflow. Source of the Amazon River Source of the Nile Spring Strahler number Water well
Houston
Houston is the most populous city in the U. S. state of Texas and the fourth most populous city in the United States, with a census-estimated population of 2.312 million in 2017. It is the most populous city in the Southern United States and on the Gulf Coast of the United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the seat of Harris County and the principal city of the Greater Houston metropolitan area, the fifth most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States and the second most populous in Texas after the Dallas-Fort Worth MSA. With a total area of 627 square miles, Houston is the eighth most expansive city in the United States, it is the largest city in the United States by total area, whose government is not consolidated with that of a county or borough. Though in Harris County, small portions of the city extend into Fort Bend and Montgomery counties. Houston was founded by land speculators on August 30, 1836, at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou and incorporated as a city on June 5, 1837.
The city is named after former General Sam Houston, president of the Republic of Texas and had won Texas' independence from Mexico at the Battle of San Jacinto 25 miles east of Allen's Landing. After serving as the capital of the Texas Republic in the late 1830s, Houston grew into a regional trading center for the remainder of the 19th century; the arrival of the 20th century saw a convergence of economic factors which fueled rapid growth in Houston, including a burgeoning port and railroad industry, the decline of Galveston as Texas' primary port following a devastating 1900 hurricane, the subsequent construction of the Houston Ship Channel, the Texas oil boom. In the mid-20th century, Houston's economy diversified as it became home to the Texas Medical Center—the world's largest concentration of healthcare and research institutions—and NASA's Johnson Space Center, where the Mission Control Center is located. Houston's economy has a broad industrial base in energy, manufacturing and transportation.
Leading in healthcare sectors and building oilfield equipment, Houston has the second most Fortune 500 headquarters of any U. S. municipality within its city limits. The Port of Houston ranks first in the United States in international waterborne tonnage handled and second in total cargo tonnage handled. Nicknamed the "Space City", Houston is a global city, with strengths in culture and research; the city has a population from various ethnic and religious backgrounds and a large and growing international community. Houston is the most diverse metropolitan area in Texas and has been described as the most racially and ethnically diverse major metropolis in the U. S, it is home to many cultural institutions and exhibits, which attract more than 7 million visitors a year to the Museum District. Houston has an active visual and performing arts scene in the Theater District and offers year-round resident companies in all major performing arts; the Allen brothers—Augustus Chapman and John Kirby—explored town sites on Buffalo Bayou and Galveston Bay.
According to historian David McComb, "he brothers, on August 26, 1836, bought from Elizabeth E. Parrott, wife of T. F. L. Parrott and widow of John Austin, the south half of the lower league granted to her by her late husband, they paid $5,000 total, but only $1,000 of this in cash. They lobbied the Republic of Texas Congress to designate Houston as the temporary capital, agreeing to provide the new government with a capital building. About a dozen persons resided in the town at the beginning of 1837, but that number grew to about 1,500 by the time the Texas Congress convened in Houston for the first time that May. Houston was granted incorporation with James S. Holman becoming its first mayor. In the same year, Houston became the county seat of Harrisburg County. In 1839, the Republic of Texas relocated its capital to Austin; the town suffered another setback that year when a yellow fever epidemic claimed about one life out of every eight residents. Yet it persisted as a commercial center, forming a symbiosis with Galveston.
Landlocked farmers brought their produce to Houston, using Buffalo Bayou to gain access to Galveston and the Gulf of Mexico. Houston merchants profited from selling staples to farmers and shipping the farmers' produce to Galveston; the great majority of slaves in Texas came with their owners from the older slave states. Sizable numbers, came through the domestic slave trade. New Orleans was the center of this trade in the Deep South. Thousands of enslaved blacks lived near the city before the American Civil War. Many of them near the city worked on sugar and cotton plantations, while most of those in the city limits had domestic and artisan jobs. In 1840, the community established a chamber of commerce in part to promote shipping and navigation at the newly created port on Buffalo Bayou. By 1860, Houston had emerged as a commercial and railroad hub for the export of cotton. Railroad spurs from the Texas inland converged in Houston, where they met rail lines to the ports of Galveston and Beaumont.
During the American Civil War, Houston served as a headquarters for General John Magruder, who used the city as an organization point for the Battle of Galveston. After the Civil War, Houston businessmen initia
Livestock
Livestock is defined as domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to produce labor and commodities such as meat, milk, fur and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer to those that are bred for consumption, while other times it refers only to farmed ruminants, such as cattle and goats. Horses are considered livestock in the United States; the USDA uses livestock to some uses of the term “red meat”, in which it refers to all the mammal animals kept in this setting to be used as commodities. The USDA mentions pork, veal and lamb are all classified as livestock and all livestock is considered to be red meats. Poultry and fish are not included in the category; the breeding and slaughter of livestock, known as animal husbandry, is a component of modern agriculture, practiced in many cultures since humanity's transition to farming from hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Animal husbandry practices have varied across cultures and time periods. Livestock were not confined by fences or enclosures, but these practices have shifted to intensive animal farming, sometimes referred to as "factory farming".
Now, over 99% of livestock are raised on factory farms. These practices increase yield of the various commercial outputs, but have led to negative impacts on animal welfare and the environment. Livestock production continues to play a major economic and cultural role in numerous rural communities. Livestock as a word was first used between 1650 and 1660, as a merger between the words "live" and "stock". In some periods, "cattle" and "livestock" have been used interchangeably. Today, the modern meaning of cattle is domesticated bovines. United States federal legislation defines the term to make specified agricultural commodities eligible or ineligible for a program or activity. For example, the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act of 1999 defines livestock only as cattle and sheep, while the 1988 disaster assistance legislation defined the term as "cattle, goats, poultry, equine animals used for food or in the production of food, fish used for food, other animals designated by the Secretary."Deadstock is defined in contradistinction to livestock as "animals that have died before slaughter, sometimes from illness".
It is illegal in many countries, such as Canada, to sell or process meat from dead animals for human consumption. Animal-rearing originated during the cultural transition to settled farming communities from hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Animals are domesticated when their living conditions are controlled by humans. Over time, the collective behaviour and physiology of livestock have changed radically. Many modern farm animals are unsuited to life in the wild; the dog was domesticated early. Goats and sheep were domesticated in multiple events sometime between 11,000 and 5,000 years ago in Southwest Asia. Pigs were domesticated by 8,500 BC in the Near 6,000 BC in China. Domestication of the horse dates to around 4000 BC. Cattle have been domesticated since 10,500 years ago. Chickens and other poultry may have been domesticated around 7000 BC; the term "livestock" is may be defined narrowly or broadly. Broadly, livestock refers to any breed or population of animal kept by humans for a useful, commercial purpose.
This can mean semidomestic animals, or captive wild animals. Semidomesticated refers to animals which are only domesticated or of disputed status; these populations may be in the process of domestication. Traditionally, animal husbandry was part of the subsistence farmer's way of life, producing not only the food needed by the family but the fuel, clothing and draught power. Killing the animal for food was a secondary consideration, wherever possible its products, such as wool, eggs and blood were harvested while the animal was still alive. In the traditional system of transhumance and livestock moved seasonally between fixed summer and winter pastures. Animals can be kept intensively. Extensive systems involve animals roaming at will, or under the supervision of a herdsman for their protection from predators. Ranching in the Western United States involves large herds of cattle grazing over public and private lands. Similar cattle stations are found in South America and other places with large areas of land and low rainfall.
Ranching systems have been used for sheep, ostrich, emu and alpaca. 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. In rural locations and poultry can obtain much of their nutrition from scavenging, in African communities, hens may live for months without being fed, still produce one or two eggs a week. At the other extreme, in the more developed parts of the world, animals are intensively managed. In between these two extremes are semi-intensive family run farms where livestock graze outside for much of the year, silage or hay is made to cove
