Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Continuous grazing by sheep or cattle is a widespread extensive farming system, with low inputs and outputs.. Extensive farming most commonly means raising sheep and cattle in areas with low agricultural productivity, but includes large-scale growing of wheat, barley, cooking oils and other grain crops in areas like the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia.
An important aspect of energy use in livestock production is the energy consumption that the animals contribute. Feed Conversion Ratio is an animal's ability to convert feed into meat. The Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR) is calculated by taking the energy, protein, or mass input of the feed divided by the output of meat provided by the animal.
It uses between 20 and 33% of the world's fresh water, [81] Livestock, and the production of feed for them, occupy about a third of the Earth's ice-free land. [82] Livestock production contributes to species extinction, desertification, [83] and habitat destruction. [84] and is the primary driver of the Holocene extinction.
Cattle are domesticated ungulates, a member of the family Bovidae, in the subfamily Bovinae, and descended from the aurochs (Bos primigenius). [46] They are raised as livestock for their flesh (called beef and veal), dairy products (milk), leather and as draught animals. As of 2009–2010 it is estimated that there are 1.3–1.4 billion head of ...
Smithfield Foods hog CAFO, Unionville, Missouri, 2013. In animal husbandry, a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO), as defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), is an intensive animal feeding operation (AFO) in which over 1,000 animal units are confined for over 45 days a year.
Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) was defined by the U.S. Congress in the 1996 amendments to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, or Magnuson-Stevens Act, as "those waters and substrate necessary to fish for spawning, breeding, feeding or growth to maturity."
Insects as feed are insect species used as animal feed, either for livestock, including aquaculture, or as pet food. As livestock feed production uses ~33% of the world's agricultural cropland use, insects might be able to supplement livestock feed. They can transform low-value organic wastes, are nutritious and have low environmental impacts.
These higher protein-level requirements are a consequence of the higher feed efficiency of aquatic animals (higher feed conversion ratio [FCR], that is, kg of feed per kg of animal produced). Fish such as salmon have an FCR around 1.1 kg of feed per kg of salmon [ 11 ] whereas chickens are in the 2.5 kg of feed per kg of chicken range.