Behavior - the Keystone in Optimizing Free-ranging Ungulate Production

This chapter provides an overview on several topics paramount to understanding domestic free-ranging livestock foraging behavior. Animal behavior has always played a pivotal role in human management strategies involving domestic livestock, only within the last 30 years has there been a coordinated effort to try and use behavior principles in managing free-ranging livestock. Coupled with this focus has come advances in several key supporting sciences and technologies that impact today’s domestic livestock management. This combined package of information and awareness has resulted in a new focus on husbandry, once considered only art it is now enmeshed within the arena of science, ethics and animal welfare. What is known and what remains to be learned will provide domestic livestock production with opportunities that will benefit ecosystem stewardship as we move through the 21 century.