The Backyard Homestead Guide To Raising Farm Animals

The Backyard Homestead

by Gail Damerow

Enjoy a weekend breakfast featuring eggs, bacon, and honey from your own chickens, pigs, and bees, or a holiday meal with your own heritage-breed turkey as the main attraction. Gail Damerow covers everything you need to successfully raise your own farm animals, from selecting the right breeds to producing delicious fresh milk, cheese, honey, eggs, and meat. Even with just a small plot of land, you can become more self-sufficient, save money, and enjoy healthy, delicious animal products.

Also available in this series: The Backyard Homestead, The Backyard Homestead Book of Building Projects, The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner, and The Backyard Homestead Book of Kitchen Know-How.

Genres: Nonfiction, Gardening, Reference, Animals, Food, Survival, How To

360 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2011

About the author

Gail Damerow and her husband operate a family farm in Tennessee where they keep poultry and dairy goats, tend a sizable garden, and maintain a small orchard. They grow and preserve much of their own food, make their own yogurt and ice cream, and bake their own bread. Gail has written extensively on raising livestock, growing fruits and vegetables, and related rural skills. She shares her experience and knowledge as a regular contributor to Backyard Poultry and Countryside magazines, as an occasional contributor to numerous other periodicals, and as the author or contributor to more than a dozen country skills how-to books.

Reviews

[Aude · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll give it four stars, although I skipped the parts about the animals I wasn't interested in.
In fact, I would have given it 5 stars if it weren't for repetitive mistakes on the author's part, mistakes coming from a good intention: the author uses American units, and then attempts to translate them into the metric system. But if she gets it right for length or weight, she systematically gets surfaces wrong. 1 foot might be 30cm, but a square foot is 900 cm², not 30 cm²!

[K_imiia · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a good book and I liked it
It had a series of beautiful and impressive sentences and the story could be compared to today's life
And the end of the book that said (pigs can no longer be distinguished from humans and humans from pigs) was beautiful, interesting and thought-provoking for me and had a beautiful meaning

[Caroline Hodge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only read the chicken chapter. Very informative and specific for when you’re ready to purchase chickens.

[Heather Logsdon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love this book. It has in-depth suggestions on proper care for small farm animals. Not only can this book help animal owners care for animals, it helps a small farmer select the best breeds for the particular farm needs, prepare for a protective environment, identify potential health issues, and give the formula for success in dimensions for each animal’s basic needs. This book is perfect for a beginner small animal farmer, but it is also great for advanced animal farmers that may need quick reminders or instant reference. It covers various animals including poultry, waterfowl, rabbit, sheep, goat, pig, cattle, and even bees! I highly recommend reading for anyone who is considering owning a farm animal or currently growing flock/herd animals! The information is priceless!!! One of my favorite top ten homestead books!!

[Allie108 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of useful information. Plans my on moving to a homestead, and having some understanding of options, and what we might be getting into with the various choices is a great thing. Have me some talking points to cover with hubby. 😁

[Karli W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear and informative. Great straightforward information about keeping any kind of homestead animal. From breeds, purchasing, overall care to breeding, newborn care, milking and butchering, this book covers all aspects. Definitely a helpful to keep on hand!

[Jean Hamer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book for beginers who are just getting started with a little land and some farm animals. Also good resource for questions once they are home. No section on horse care, but i assume thats cus horses are not production animals, just pets. We have horses, meat and egg chickens and plan on goats soon. This book provided an overview to get us started.

[Mercey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great. Very informative and easy to use as a manual for the "urban homesteader!"

[Veronica · Rating 3 out of 5]

For people just getting interested in the idea of farming, this guide is probably fairly useful, but for more experienced farmers, fairly useless.

[SD Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good information for people looking to be more self sufficient. Well written and informative.

[Brenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful in-depth beginner's guide to homestead livestock. Recommended read to anyone looking to homestead.

[Loz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good info for people starting their research!

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great resource guide. Tons of references to other references.

[Braimah Zeinab · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet to read

[Trang · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would buy this book as soon as I start my animal farm. I like the intro and detailed traits and how to care for each animal. The homestead is only about the animals it listed.

[Shelby Moody · Rating 5 out of 5]

TONS of great information on many kinds of animals. I got it from the public library but will be purchasing one for my homestead library. I can’t wait to read the other versions!

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read that covers (at a somewhat high level) a variety of livestock. I've read it and refer back to relevant chapters quite often.

[Allison McGill]

The genre of this book is non-fiction and also an almost how-to book. I would say the target audience of this book would be older kids or adults to see and learn what it takes to raise farm animals. This may seem like kind of an odd book but working in an elementary school now I have seen the kids do a section about farm animals. I think this book would be fun to pick out sections and show them that raising animals isn't always easy.

I would pair this up with the book Babe: The Gallant Pig. This is a fun story with lots of different types of animals in it and they all live on the farm. A book like this could be geared toward kids as young as first grade if read aloud to them, or even grades 3 and 4 where they read the book out loud. After reading this book you could go back and compare and contrast the animals from the real farm to the farm where Babe lives.

[Ezekiel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It definitely covers old ground (the illustrations are mostly from The Backyard Homestead), but it seems to give new more in depth information as well. Like The Backyard Homestead, I wouldn't necessarily use it *instead* of a more specific/in depth book just about goats or sheep or cows or whatever, but as a good way to figure out if more information would be helpful, I think it's pretty well equipped.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent book about raising animals in town. Gave a lot of good information about raising farm animals in the city or backyard. I think the author is wrong about their assumption that most backyard raisers won't become somewhat attacked to their animals and treat them as pets. Some of the suggestions might put off this type of "farmer." Regardless, a lot of good information about breeds and basic care for the beginner.

[Anna Katherina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has a wealth of information. Unlike its sister book, though, this one focuses on livestock and goes into much more depth than the others; it's a great starting place if you have no idea what you're doing with livestock- whether it's Goats, Waterfowl, or just your average chicken... What really makes this book for me, though, is the wide use of pictures to help illustrate what the authors are talking about.

[Jess Dollar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great starter book! I am so excited to start my little farmstead this winter and this book gave me a good overview on what kinds of shelters the various animals may need and how best to use the acreage that I have (only 3 acres, maybe half of that already pastured).
I will be getting more books by the same author soon.

[Tessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome compendium, especially for those who have interest but limited experience. Her other book which is very similar, Barnyard In Your Backyard, has more info on what to use your animals for - crafts, foods, etc. Both are great but I slightly favor Backyard. Get both from the library to see which one serves your purposes best.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book on this subject I've read so far! It's probably the most helpful, accessible reference in this subject. I very much enjoyed it and fully intend to use it as a guide for the rest of the foreseeable future.

[Flower Edmiston · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of useful information, pointers, and recipes in a direct and to the point format.

[Emily Mellow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't read all the sections of this book, because we have no immediate plans to keep pigs, ducks, etc, but the chicken & rabbit sections were great. Useful info.

[Beth Lequeuvre · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is awesome. I'm buying it.

[Amy]

Helpful and very accessible.

[Owen Byrd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very educational for kids who want to own sheep, goats, bees, pigs, or chickens.

[Heidi Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great resource. I will check it out again a few years down the road when I'm ready for chickens. :)