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This article is about ranching. For other meanings see Ranch (disambiguation).

Ranching is the raising of cattle or sheep on rangeland, although one might also speak of ranching with regard to less common livestock such as elk, bison or emu. The word applies in the western United States, in Canada, Latin America and South America. (Australian usage would refer to ranches as "stations"; New Zealanders use the term "runs".)

Historically, during a period on the Frontier in North America after the removal of the American bison and the Native Americans and before the coming of the homesteaders, ranching dominated economic activity. The public lands on the Great Plains consisted of "open range," where anyone could turn cattle loose for grazing. Barbed wire, invented in 1869, gradually made inroads in fencing off privately-owned land, especially for homesteads. Ranching became limited to lands of little use for arable farming.

Ranching forms part of the iconography of the Western in motion pictures.

Ranching Companies

• The Thomas Ranch- located in Cochise County, Tombstone, Bisbee, Arizona since 1902.
• 6666 Ranch - located in West Texas.
• King Ranch - one of the largest ranches in the world, located in south Texas.
• Vestey Group - major cattle ranching and interests in Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela.
• XIT Ranch - a large ranch in the western Texas Panhandle (no longer in existence).
• CS Cattle Company - a large family owned ranch in Northern New Mexico
• La Escalera Ranch - Ranked by Texas Monthly magazine as one of the largest ranches in Texas, estimated 300,000 acres located in Pecos County, Reeves County, Brewster and Baylor County; owned and operated by the Gerald Lyda family, headquartered in Fort Stockton, Texas. The Lyda family has been involved in other major ranching operations in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, including the sprawling Ladder Ranch in southeastern New Mexico, now owned by media mogul Ted Turner.
• Double Check Ranch, Arizona Sun Natural Beef - located in Dudleyville, AZ.

Further Reading

• Breaking Clean, Judy Blunt, Knopf, 2002, hardcover, ISBN 0375401318
• This Was Cattle Ranching: Yesterday and Today, Virginia Paul, Superior Publishing Company, Seattle, Washington, 1973
• Heart-Diamond Kathy L. Greenwood, University of North Texas Press, 1989, hardback, ISBN 0-929398-08-4
• Cattle Ranges of the Southwest, published 1898, hosted by the Portal to Texas History

External links

• The Handbook of Texas Online: Ranching

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