The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals

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.

The Best Breakfast You'll Ever Eat, Courtesy of Your Backyard Animals:

1. Gather fresh eggs for fluffy omelets.
2. Stuff homemade sausages with meat.
3. Fill your omelet with tangy, creamy cheese.
4. Stir sweet honey into tea or coffee.
5. Fry a steak or bacon as a savory side.
6. Top off your meal with a cold glass of milk.

Breakfast isn't the only meal you'll enjoy from your backyard farm...
Imagine the satisfaction of feeding your family wholesome eggs, milk, meat, and honey produced by animals raised organically and humanely in your backyard. On as little land as one-tenth of an acre, you can raise healthy, productive barnyard animals and take a big step toward food independence.

Learn how to:

• Raise chickens in brooder boxes
• Determine the freshness of eggs hidden in the backyard
• Roast a duck or goose to perfection
• Make goat-milk yogurt
• Interpret everyday sheep behavior
• Harvest honey
• Raise your own Thanksgiving turkey
• Manage your beef cattle to produce the best-tasting meat

Table of Contents:
Contents
Preface
Introducing Backyard Farm Animals
How Many Animals Can You Keep?
Chickens
Turkeys
Ducks & Geese
Rabbits
Honey Bees
Goats
Sheep
Pigs
Dairy Cows & Beef Cattle
Glossary
Resources
Credits
Index

Includes Full-Color at-a-Glance Breed Guide