There’s a lot of advice out there on how to successfully raise farm animals, and as with any advice, some is better than others. To help ensure readers are receiving the best advice on raising farm animals, GRIT has compiled 100 pages of articles, written by livestock experts, into one simple, helpful guide. The second edition to Guide to Raising Farm Animals has more than 47 keys to finding the best animals for your homestead. It covers the best care for your livestock in heat and cold, how to protect your animals from predators, tips on rotational grazing, and much more.

GRIT has created more than six editions of GRIT Guide to Backyard Chickens, and all have been extremely popular with readers and full of valuable, expertly written articles on raising and maintaining a healthy backyard flock. Now, GRIT has compiled the best of the best chicken articles into one premium issue! There are more than 111 tips for raising the best poultry flock, advice from experienced flock owners, more than 27 egg and meat recipes, information on heritage chicken breeds, pros and cons of coop lights, details on other poultry (such as quail and ducks), and so much more.

GRIT has created more than six editions of Grit Guide to Chickens, and all have been extremely popular with readers and full of valuable, expertly written articles on raising and maintaining a healthy backyard flock. Now, Grit has compiled the best of the best chicken articles into this newly updated and revised premium issue! The second edition of the GRIT Premium: Guide to Chickens features 112 pages of articles to get you tending your flock to the best of your abilities. With this premium issue, get advice from GRIT flock owners, learn about a variety of chicken breeds, discover why and how a rooster crows, try delicious recipes for eggs and meat chickens, keep predators at bay, build a coop, and more.

Other articles include:

• Incredible Homestead Chickens – Easy-to-keep, chickens will provide delicious eggs and meat, plus bug control, fertilizer, and tillage.
• Use Up Those Eggs – Without feeding the local wildlife.
• Wintering Chickens – Fowl weather lies ahead; follow a few easy steps, and your flock won’t be vulnerable.
• Chickens in the Garden – You can “recoop” much of the expense of raising chickens by putting their manure to work in your garden and enlisting your birds for organic pest control.
• Adventures with Mail-Order Chickens – Certain beverages and ordering poultry do not mix.

As communities across the country amend urban bylaws to allow backyard flocks, more and more of us are enjoying the pleasures and rewards of keeping hens in the garden.Her book is stuffed full of practical advice on keeping the garden both gorgeous and productive and hens happy and healthy. Langford includes dozens of simple and elegant recipes from her own kitchen, as well as contributions from celebrated chefs.With beautiful photographs, illustrations, and garden plans, this book is sure to become a favorite of avid and aspiring backyard farmers alike.

Keep chickens with less work and more joy! Free yourself from the burden of daily hen-tending tasks, and go on vacation without worrying about your flock. How? Turn your backyard into a hentopia: a chicken habitat that keeps your flock safe, clean, fed, and entertained, with less work left over for you. From the Vending Machine Feeder to the Refilling Rainwaterer, author Frank Hyman’s innovative building projects are designed to save time and money while taking the best care of your chickens.

Goats have provided humankind with essential products for centuries; indeed, they bear the noble distinction of being the first domesticated farm animal. From providing milk and meat for sustenance and fiber and hides for clothing and shelter to carrying packs and clearing brush, there isn’t much that goats cannot do. Managing goats successfully requires an understanding of how nature designed them to thrive, including nutritional and psychological needs, as well as how to identify a problem and intercede before it’s too late.

For more than a decade, Gianaclis Caldwell and her family have operated Pholia Farm Creamery, an off-grid, raw milk goat cheese dairy. In Holistic Goat Care, Caldwell offers readers a comprehensive guide to maintaining a healthy herd of goats, whether they are dairy goats, meat goats, fiber goats, or pet goats. Holistic Goat Care will empower even novice goat owners to confidently diagnose and treat most of the ailments that goats might experience. For the experienced goat farmer, the book offers a depth of insight and approaches to treatment not found in any other book. Caldwell places special emphasis throughout on holistic, natural, and alternative approaches to caring for goats, including information on:

• Handling and managing goats using their natural instincts as an asset
• Developing good farm management practices, such as appropriate housing and fencing systems and manure and mortality management
• Making feeding decisions based on understanding goats’ ruminant digestive system and their evolutionary needs
• Growing forage and garden crops as feed and utilizing wild browse
• Troubleshooting health problems based on assessing symptoms
• Implementing advanced health procedures such as pain control, fecal testing, and transplanting rumen microbes from healthy to sick goats
• Diagnosing, treating, and preventing more than 75 common goat ailments

Whether your herd is two or two hundred, this first-of-its-kind, comprehensive book will help you keep your goats healthy, safe, and productive, and give you a deep and enjoyable insight into the wondrous creature that is the goat.

Best-selling author Melissa Caughey knows that backyard chickens are like any favorite pet — fun to spend time with and fascinating to observe. Her hours among the flock have resulted in this quirky, irresistible guide packed with firsthand insights into how chickens communicate and interact, use their senses to understand the world around them, and establish pecking order and roles within the flock. Combining her up-close observations with scientific findings and interviews with other chicken enthusiasts, Caughey answers unexpected questions such as Do chickens have names for each other? How do their eyes work? and How do chickens learn?

Learn how to improve the day-to-day operation as well as the profitability of your farm by raising healthier, more contented animals. Temple Grandin, North America's most influential advocate of humane livestock treatment, shares dozens of methods and detailed plans she has developed for low-stress ways to move livestock on pastures, paddocks and feedlot pens. The benefits are great — for you and for your livestock. Well-treated animals, free from fear and pain:

• Injure themselves less frequently, keeping bruised meat to a minimum
• Stay healthier, reducing veterinary expenditures
• Remain calm in most circumstances, keeping human handlers safer
• Deliver higher yields of marketable meat
• Answer consumer demand for humanely raised meat
• Are an indispensable part of efficient, satisfying, ethically managed small farms

Humane Livestock Handling includes Grandin's insightful explanations of how her general research into how animals think can be applied to improving any farmer's understanding of livestock behavior and effectiveness in handling animals. The book includes complete construction plans that are applicable for facilities of every size and a wide range of needs, including:

• Handling systems for ranches
• Cattle corral systems
• Sheep and bison corrals
• Loading ramp details
• Fences and gates
• Latches

For more than four decades, the self-described “contrary farmer” and writer Gene Logsdon commented on the state of American agriculture. In Letter to a Young Farmer, his final book of essays, Logsdon addressed the next generation: young people moving back to the land to enjoy a better way of life as small-scale “garden farmers.” It’s a lifestyle that isn’t defined by accumulating wealth or by the “get big or get out” agribusiness mindset. Instead, it’s one that recognizes the beauty of nature, cherishes the land, respects our fellow creatures, and values rural traditions. It’s one that also looks forward and embraces “right technologies,” including new and innovative ways of working smarter, not harder, and avoiding premature burnout.