I feel like a built in "wrangling" mechanic would be nice for animal husbandry. I know we can try to herd animals at the moment with require a lot of headache and a lot of time however I think being able to "grab" animals should be possible at some point. My thoughts are this....
We should be able to hand grab "small" to "medium" animals. However there should be some level of cost and depending on the type of animal the costs will be different. I also feel that gear should help affect the costs as well. For example if you have no gear and grab a chicken it would cost you more energy to hold the chicken as in real life the chicken would be floundering around. If you grab a Fox you would probably take some level of damage as well as losing energy unless you had some kind of leather gloves or some wrangling gear on you deter bite/scratching. Here are some examples of small/medium animals
Chickens
Foxes
Pups
There should then be some level of roping larger animals with the same style of energy loss depending on gear and the type of animal encountered. One of the bigger differences would be that damage would not be taken unless the animal charges/attacks you.
This could also be more of a captureing thing as well. You rope an animal and work to bind it's feet...depending on how well you do you receive minimal/no damage.
Of course the current state of "wrangling" could still apply....try to herd the animals into a pen....however the mechanic mentioned above would allow for a faster way to wrangle animals with a cost associated to making it "easier"; especially in early stages of the game.