History of livestock
Livestock refers to one or more domestic animals, grown in the agricultural production of goods such as food, fiber and labor. The term "livestock" as used in this article does not include poultry or farmed fish, but the inclusion of these, especially birds, within the meaning of "livestock" is common.
Livestock are usually raised for subsistence or for profit. Raising animals is an important component of modern agriculture. It is practiced in many cultures, since the transition to farming from hunter-gathers living.
Animal rearing has its origins in the transition to a settled culture of rural communities rather than hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Animals are "home" when their breeding and living conditions are under human control. Over time, collective behavior, life cycle, and physiology of livestock have changed radically. Many modern farm animals are not suitable for living in the wild. Dogs were domesticated in East Asia about 15,000 years ago, goats and sheep were domesticated about 8000 BC in Asia. Swine, or pigs were domesticated in 7000 BC in the Middle East and China. The earliest evidence of domesticated horses dated 4,000 BC.
Older English sources like King James version of the Bible refer to livestock in general, and "cattle", as opposed to the word "deer", which was then used to wild animals that do not belong. The word cattle derives from Middle English Chatel, which means all kinds of movable personal property, including, of course, livestock, which is different from the non-movable property. Later in English, sometimes less cattle is called "small cattle" in the sense of movable property on land that was not bought or sold automatically to the ground. Today in the modern sense of "cattle", without qualification, usually refers to the home in cattle. Other species of the genus Bos are sometimes called wild cattle.