Farming and Agricultural Technology
Large stock farms.
Two types of large stock farms,
extensive and
intensive, may be distinguished.
The extensive type is exemplified by the cattle ranchers of
the United States. At the extreme, there are no
buildings, only equipment. In
Australia and
New Zealand, dairy cows
are kept without housing. The only building houses the milking
parlour and the milk room, in the centre of the pasture. In
the western United States, the most important beef ranches have
several thousand head, entirely free on the range. The only
building is the elevator with the milling and mixing machinery.
For the animals there are only troughs and fences. Among intensive
stock farms are the big dairy units--with several hundred cows--in
the United States, in western Europe
(France, northern Italy),
and in eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics. There
are three major layouts: parallel buildings; monobloc buildings
(in Hungary, for example); and circular layout,
with the milking parlour in the centre (United States, northern
Italy). The covered feedlots for fattening beef, in the U.S.
Midwest and elsewhere, feed from several hundred to several
thousand head of cattle and are generally built with a shelter
for the animals and with tower or bunker silos. Large units
for hog production frequently have many buildings,
partly to reduce disease risks and partly to separate the various
animals--for example, the suckling sows, in-pig sows, fattening
pigs, and boars. Some systems, however, use only one or two
types of buildings. Large poultry units, specialized either
for egg or for broiler production, use large identical buildings,
the number depending on the unit size.
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