Books @The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals

Imagine 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. With “The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals,” even urban and suburban residents can successfully raise chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, rabbits, goats, sheep, cows, pigs and honey bees. It’s easier than you think, and it can be done on small plots of land. This essential guide covers everything from selecting the right breeds to producing delicious fresh milk, cheese, honey, eggs and meat.

Gail Damerow, author of “The Chicken Health Handbook, 2nd Edition,” has written extensively on raising chickens and other livestock, growing fruits and vegetables, and related rural know-how in more than a dozen country skills how-to books, including the best-selling “Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens, The Chicken Encyclopedia, and Hatching and Brooding Your Own Chicks.” Damerow is a regular contributor to Backyard Poultry and Countryside magazines. She lives in Tennessee with her husband, where they operate a family farm with poultry and dairy goats, a sizable garden, and a small orchard.