Mexico prior to the 1840s. American ranchers borrowed many other cattle-raising techniques from Mexico.

Unlike the Eastern United States, the Western prairies of the 19th century were vast, undeveloped, and uncultivated. The land was also generally much more arid, with scarce, widely separated sources of water. Until the invention of barbed wire in the 1870s, it was more practical to fence the livestock out of developed land, rather than to fence it in. As the United