Living with Goats: Everything You Need to Know to Raise Your Own Backyard Herd,   ISBN:9781599214924

Customer Rating: 

This is a GREAT book! So well written. I would recommend this book to anyone.

Customer Rating: 

This book was a wonderful preparatory read for me. I feel much more confidant in buying and caring for goats. Great guide.

Customer Rating: 

There is no better time for a book like this than now. In the wake of movies like Food Inc. and other revelations about what our food industry is doing to us and to the world, we all need to know "how to" just begin living--not only with goats, as the authors do with humor and love--but with the environment and with each other. We have to start somewhere. Books like this remind us that we can.

Customer Rating: 

I received this book in the mail yesterday and am still not quite sure what to think about it. The book itself is very slick and pretty, the photography and lay out is perfect in every detail. The information presented in the book seems to be pretty factual, but I do have one question. Why do ex-city folks who move to the country for a couple of years always have to write about things as if they've been doing them a lifetime? Personally, I would be more likely to take the advice of someone who has kept goats for 10-20 years over someone who has had them 2-3 years and decided they knew enough to write a book. Case in point, the horned or dehorned issue. The writer goes on at length about how much more beautiful and natural a goat looks with horns, but pretty much glosses over the negative effects of having horned goats in the intensive conditions that most milk goats are kept in. She doesn't mention much about goats dying because they've gotten their horns caught in a fence and then eaten alive by predators. Or the dangers to the goatkeeper when working closely with horned goats in tight spaces. Not to mention how difficult it is to sell high quality horned goats for what they are worth, except on the meat market. Many reputable breeders won't touch a horned goat with a ten foot pole. The author may and probably does have a lot of good solid information to offer in this book, however, I personally would be more likely to take her advice did she have more years of hands on goatkeeping experience. I think this book would have been better done had she written about her experiences with the early years of goatkeeping, a journal type book like her first one, rather than a how-to book.