Read the text to find out what animal husbandry is today and complete the diagram.

1. Agriculture provides people with food, feed and other useful products. All over the world farmers cultivate valuable plants and raise productive domesticated animals. There are two main branches in modern agriculture: crop production (or crop farming) and animal husbandry (or animal farming).Animal farming is a process in which a farmer breeds, raises and cares for livestock either for commerce or private use.

2. The word "livestock" refers to domesticated animals such as beef and dairy cattle, sheep, goats, swine (hogs), horses, donkeys and mules, buffalo, oxen, rabbits or "exotic" animals, for example, camels, emus, ostriches, or any animal which a farmer keeps and uses either for food or pleasure. Sometimes animal scientists include in this term also poultry, such as chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys, but they include neither honey bees nor fish within the term "livestock".

3. As cattle, sheep and horses are herbivorousmammals, farmers try to keep these domestic animals on pastures. However, farmers often grow either cereals or other agricultural crops as additional feed for their animals.Animal feeds are classified into two main groups: concentrates and roughages. Concentrates are high in energy value and are subdivided into the following four groups: cereal grains and their by-products (barley, corn (or maize), oats, rye, wheat); high-protein oil meals or cakes (soybean, cottonseed); by-products from processing of sugar beets; by-products from other industries. Roughages include such feeds as pasture grasses, hay, silage, root crops, and straw.

4. Livestock and poultry provide the following benefits to humanity: meat, eggs, dairyproducts, raw materials, fertilizer, labour, management of land.In many countries livestock is the main source of animal protein because only livestock convert various food sources into human food. Poultry provide people with white meat as well as with eggs. People process milk of cows, sheep, goats into a variety of valuable dairy products such as yoghurt, cheese, butter, ice cream, kefir, and koumiss.Livestock produce useful raw materials, for example, horses and cows provide leather, poultry produce feather and down, sheep and goats provide wool for textile industry.Livestock leave behind manure which farmers spread on fields and this increases yields of crops many times.In modern agriculture neither cattle nor horses are the main source of mechanical energy. However, in some poor countries people are still using livestock as draft cattle. Sometimes farmers use the grazing of livestock as a way to control weeds.

(http://en.wikipedia.org)

ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

LIVESTOCK FEEDS BENEFITS

Practice 1. Summarize the text by listing:

- two main branches in modern agriculture;

- domesticated animals included into the notion “livestock”;

- types of feeds;

- benefits provided by livestock to humanity.

Practice 2. Reread the text to find out which of its paragraph deals with:

- agriculture and its two main branches;

- activities of a farmer;

- exotic animals which a farmer keeps;

- feeds classified as roughages;

- types of valuable dairy products;

- useful raw materials animals provide people with;

- the role of livestock in increasing yields of crops;

- usage of livestock as draft cattle.