- ISBN13: 9781603420365
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
From the large-rumped Karakul sheep to the wrinkled Fengjing pig, North America is home to an extraordinary array of livestock breeds. Increasingly, a rare breed renaissance celebrates heritage breeds for their contribution to biodiversity, adaptation to specific environments, curious appearance, or ability to produce singular meat, milk, or fiber. At the same time, people continue to need up-to-date information about the major domestic breeds.
Finally, a single resource offers detailed information about both common and heritage breeds: Storey’s Illustrated Breed Guide to Sheep, Goats, Cattle, and Pigs by Carol Ekarius. This attractive, at-a-glance reference, written by one of America’s foremost livestock experts, covers 194 of North America’s most significant breeds of cattle, goats, sheep, and swine — from the common Guernsey cow to the near-extinct Guinea hog. For each breed, Ekarius provides full-color photographs, a brief history, and details about the breed’s unique qualities and quirks. Readers will enjoy reading about major breeds such as the iconic Holstein cow, and Icelandic sheep, as well as hundreds of lesser-known varieties, like the long-legged, ginger-colored Tamworth pig; the lilac-spotted Jacob Sheep; the deerlike San Clemente goat; and the powerful, droopy-eared Guzerat cow.
Comprehensive, colorful, and captivating, this definitive, in-depth guide is informative enough to aid farmers in breed selection, but beautiful enough for fanciers to browse as a coffee- table book. Storey’s Illustrated Breed Guide to Sheep, Goats, Cattle, and Pigs will appeal to anyone interested in North American livestock — small-scale farmers, conservationists, agricultural historians, gourmets, biodiversity champions, animal lovers, and anyone dreaming about crafting fibers from sheep and goats. This indispensable reference showcases North American livestock breeds for what they truly are: fascinating, stunning, and endlessly varied.
Storey’s Illustrated Breed Guide to Sheep, Goats, Cattle and Pigs: 163 Breeds from Common to Rare
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5 Responses
It’s about time that a nice & complete book like this on 99.9% of sheep, goat, cattle and pig breeds (that even I can afford!) has came out. As an avid hobby farmer, I used to long for a complete guide with color photos on all the livestock breeds. Finally, Carol Ekarius has gave us a book dedicated to the characteristics, original purposes and the origins of each featured livestock breed.
This book has really nice real photos (not drawings!) of all the included breeds. Also included by the photo’s are details of the breed origin, breed purpose, the various color combinations, standards of the breed, conservation status and any special qualities that the featured breed might have.
Last but, not least Ms. Ekarius included a very well researched Resource index of breed registries, livestock magazines and a glossary. If you buy this book (which I suggest) you will find 319 pages printed on nice glossy, flexible paper stock. This isn’t the usual small black & white Storey’s guide book!
The only thing I could find fault with in this book is that on certain breeds (like Limousin) I would’ve liked more photographs. Tho, I’m sure room wise this may not have been possible.
Carol Ekarius besides being a wonderful writer is also donating a portion of her proceeds from this book to the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy!
Rating: 5 / 5
Posted on June 24th, 2010 at 1:05 am
This book has such beautiful colored photos of each breed of sheep, cattle, goats and pigs. The information listed with each breed is very thorough. I liked it so much that I immediately purchased Storey’s Guide to Poultry breeds. I highly recommend that one as well.
Rating: 5 / 5
Posted on June 24th, 2010 at 2:12 am
This book has a wealth of information on livestock, complete with pictures that are superb. This is a great book to add to your library for farms, gentlemen farms, ranches, or if you are beginning the thought process of starting.
Rating: 5 / 5
Posted on June 24th, 2010 at 3:02 am
This was an excellent book, it had great reviews about many different breeds of livestock. I was disappointed at the choice of breeds exhibited, there were several breeds that aren’t available in the United States at all while others that are quite common were missed (Such as British White cattle vs. Peitrain hogs). There were also a couple of other small ways of wording that weren’t accurate. For example, she said that Corriente cattle were raised to come fast out of the “shoot”. I’d assume the author meant “chute”, as in the equipment that roping calves burst out of during rodeos where Corriente are the cattle of choice. I also disliked how she referred to almost all cattle as cows. As an Ag teacher, I was annoyed. I feel that these may have been lack of research? I really liked the book though, and I feel it unfair to fault it on these few complaints. It does concern me on how much of the rest of the book is valid though based on these things, but it was really really educational.
Rating: 4 / 5
Posted on June 24th, 2010 at 5:02 am
This book is great for starting or expanding your farm and choosing your animals. It has great pictures and descriptions. I love it as a reference. Its hard to find pictures of some of the rare breeds and this book covers the heritage breeds really well.
Rating: 5 / 5
Posted on June 24th, 2010 at 5:33 am