The Backyard Sheep

by Sue Weaver

With Sue Weaver's expert guidance, it's easy to raise sheep in your own backyard, whether for fleece and milk (and the wonderful cheese, yogurt, and butter you can make from it) or as companionable pets. Weaver covers absolutely everything beginners need to know to keep sheep safe, healthy, and maximally productive.

Genres: Nonfiction, Agriculture

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 5, 2013

About the author

Sue Weaver has written hundreds of articles and ten books about livestock and poultry. She is a contributing editor of Hobby Farms magazine and writes the “Poultry Profiles” column for Chickens magazine. Sue lives on a small farm in Arkansas, which she shares with her husband, a flock of Classic Cheviot sheep and a mixed herd of goats, horses large and small, a donkey, two llamas, a riding steer, a water buffalo, a pet razorback pig, guinea fowl, and Buckeye chickens.

Reviews

[Isabelle Tranner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great summary of the basics of sheep keeping. Info is broken down into easy to read and reference sections with helpful illustrations. I came to this book not knowing a thing about sheep; after reading it, I feel like I can hold a conversation about the particulars of sheep husbandry.
This book works as a great introduction and provides a lenghty reference section and further reading suggestions, if there are aspects of sheep you want to explore further.

[Lisa Larremore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for raising sheep

This is a good book to read for I formation on raising sheep. I underlined several places to go back and read again for future needs.

[The Bookish Owl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent resource for young shepherds. I've recommended it to many new 4-H members.

[Kaylah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I really like how the author ties in shepherding advice written in the 1900s.

[Alisa Kester · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was totally an accidental purchase; I meant to get a sample chapter, and ended up with the whole thing. Getting a sample on Kindle Fire is odd, to say the least. But, since I had it, I gave it a quick look-through. If it had been great, I might have kept it. Since it wasn't, I returned it.

There is a LOT of information in this book about the history of sheep, in lots of different countries. There is a small chapter on breeds of sheep, there are smaller chapters with a few practical sheep-keeping pointers.

But nothing is in depth (except for the history) and there is nothing AT ALL on what to do with your sheep once you have it. No sections on wool-shearing, or milking, for instance. And since I'm largely intrigued by the idea of keeping a dairy sheep (the internet says the milk is better than a cow's, and not at all like a goat's) this book was absolutely not what I wanted.

Yay for easy Kindle returns!

[Cass · Rating 2 out of 5]

We are thinking about getting a couple of sheep for our backyard, to keep the grass down. I thought this book would give us some information to help.

Instead it is more aimed at someone who has a dozen backyard sheep. It doesn't give clear advice, it skips over whether your yard is suitable etc. Lots of detail about how to put tags on sheep, how to give injections etc.

[Sheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

More a reference then a read through.