Ranch

A ranch is an area of landscape, including various structures, given primarily to the practice of ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle or sheep for meat or wool. The word most often applies to livestock-raising operations in the western United States and Canada, though there are ranches in other areas. People who own or operate a ranch are called stockgrowers or ranchers. Ranching also a method used to raise less common livestock such as elk, American Bison or even ostrich and emu.

Ranches generally consist of large areas, but may be of nearly any size. In the western United States, many ranches are a combination of privately owned land supplemented by grazing leases on land under the control of the federal Bureau of Land Management. If the ranch includes arable or irrigated land, the ranch may also engage in a limited amount of farming, raising crops for feeding the animals, such as hay and feed grains.

Ranches that cater exclusively to tourists are called dude ranches. Most working ranches do not cater to guests, though they may allow private hunters or outfitters onto their property to hunt native wildlife. However, in recent years, a few struggling smaller operations have added some dude ranch features, such as horseback rides, cattle drives or guided hunting, in an attempt to bring in additional income. Ranching is part of the iconography of the "Wild West" as seen in Western movies.

Ranches outside North America

In Argentina ranches are known as estancias, in Brazil as fazendas. In much of South America , including Ecuador and Colombia, the term hacienda may be used. Ranchero is also a generic term used throughout Latin America. New Zealanders use the term runs.

In Australia, ranches are known as 'stations' usually in the context of what stock they carry - usually referred to as Cattle stations or Sheep stations. They exist mainly on dry rangeland in the outback and many were originally administered as pastoral leases by state governments. Owners and employees are known as Stockmen, jackaroos, and drovers rather than ranchers or cowboys. Australian sheep and cattle stations are larger than ranches in the United States. For example, one of the largest is Anna Creek station at 34,000 km².

The term "ranch" and the need for vast grazing area is not used in British agriculture. The nation has far less land area, and sufficient rainfall to allow the raising of cattle on much smaller areas. The only stock-raising properties anywhere close to the size of even the smaller ranches in the countries mentioned above are the largest hill farms in the upland areas of the United Kingdom. For similar reasons, the concept of a "ranch" is also not seen to any significant degree in most of Continental Europe.

History in North America

The historic 101 Ranch in Oklahoma showing the ranchhouse, corrals, and out-buildings.

Ranching and the cowboy tradition originated in Spain, out of the necessity to handle large herds of grazing animals on dry land from horseback. When the Conquistadors came to the Americas in the 16th century, followed by settlers, they brought their cattle and cattle-raising techniques with them. Huge land grants by the Spanish (and later Mexican) government allowed large numbers of animals to roam freely over vast areas.

As settlers from the United States moved west, they brought cattle breeds developed on the east coast and in Europe along with them, and adapted their management to the drier lands of the west by borrowing key elements of the Spanish vaquero culture. Deep Hollow Ranch, 110 miles (180 km) east of New York City in Montauk, New York, claims to be the first ranch in the United States, having continuously operated since 1658.^{[citation needed]} However, some haciendas of Mexico may be older.^{[citation needed]}

The prairie and desert lands of what today is Mexico and the western United States were well-suited to "open range" grazing. For example, the native American bison had been a mainstay of the diet for the Native Americans in the Great Plains for centuries. Likewise, Livestock were simply turned loose in the spring after their young were born and allowed to roam with little supervision and no fences, then rounded up in the fall, with the mature animals driven to market and the breeding stock brought close to the ranch headquarters for greater protection in the winter. The use of livestock branding allowed the cattle owned by different ranchers to be identified and sorted. Beginning with the settlement of Texas in the 1840s, and expansion both north and west from that time, through the Civil War and into the 1880s, ranching dominated western economic activity.

Along with ranchers came the need for agricultural crops to feed both humans and livestock, and hence many farmers also came west along with ranchers. Many operations were "diversified," with both ranching and farming activities taking place. With the Homestead Act of 1862, more settlers came west to set up farms. This created some conflict, as increasing numbers of farmers needed to fence off fields to prevent cattle and sheep from eating their crops. Barbed wire, invented in 1874, gradually made inroads in fencing off privately owned land, especially for homesteads. There was some reduction of land on the Great Plains open to grazing.

The tragic winter of 1886-1887 brought an end to the open range. *Waiting for a Chinook*, by C.M. Russell.

However, the end of the open range was not brought about by a reduction in land due to arable farming, but by overgrazing. Cattle stocked on the open range created a tragedy of the commons as each rancher sought increased economic benefit by grazing too many animals on public lands that "nobody" owned. However, being a non-native species, the grazing patterns of ever-increasing numbers of cattle slowly reduced the quality of the rangeland, in spite of the simultaneous massive slaughter of American bison that occurred. The winter of 1886-1887 was one of the most severe on record, and livestock that were already stressed by reduced grazing died by the thousands. Many large cattle operations went bankrupt, and others suffered severe financial losses. Thus, after this time, ranchers also began to fence off their land and negotiated individual grazing leases with the American government so that they could keep better control of the pasture land available to their own animals.

Ranching in South America

In the colonial period, Pampas regions of South America, particularly the Semi-arid Pampas of Argentina, were often well-suited to ranching and a tradition developed that largely paralleled that of Mexico and the United States. However, in the 20th century, cattle raising expanded into less-suitable areas. Particularly in Brazil, the 20th century marked the rapid growth of deforestation as rain forest lands were cleared by slash and burn methods that allowed grass to grow for livestock, but also led to the depletion of the land within only a few years. Many of the indigenous people of the rain forest opposed this form of cattle ranching and protested the forest being burnt down to set up grazing operations and farms. This conflict is still a concern in the region today.

Famous examples

Some of the better-known ranches and cattle stations include:

King Ranch in Texas, USA
XIT Ranch
Philmont Scout Ranch
The Australian Agricultural Company (AACo), Australia's largest pastoral company
S Kidman & Co (Australia), owners of the world's largest cattle station (ranch).
The Thomas Ranch- located in Cochise County, Tombstone, Bisbee, Arizona since 1902.
6666 Ranch - located in West Texas.
Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site [1], a part of the National Park Service, a working cattle ranch in Montana that preserves the ranching tradition of the American West.

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