Author: Rosamund Young
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525557334
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 162
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Book Description
"Within a day of receiving this book, I had consumed it... Absorbing, moving, and compulsively readable."—Lydia Davis In this affectionate, heart-warming chronicle, Rosamund Young distills a lifetime of organic farming wisdom, describing the surprising personalities of her cows and other animals At her famous Kite's Nest Farm in Worcestershire, England, the cows (as well as sheep, hens, and pigs) all roam free. They make their own choices about rearing, grazing, and housing. Left to be themselves, the cows exhibit temperaments and interests as diverse as our own. "Fat Hat" prefers men to women; "Chippy Minton" refuses to sleep with muddy legs and always reports to the barn for grooming before bed; "Jake" has a thing for sniffing the carbon monoxide fumes of the Land Rover exhaust pipe; and "Gemima" greets all humans with an angry shake of the head and is fiercely independent. An organic farmer for decades, Young has an unaffected and homely voice. Her prose brims with genuine devotion to the wellbeing of animals. Most of us never apprehend the various inner lives animals possess, least of all those that we might eat. But Young has spent countless hours observing how these creatures love, play games, and form life-long friendships. She imparts hard-won wisdom about the both moral and real-world benefits of organic farming. (If preserving the dignity of animals isn't a good enough reason for you, consider how badly factory farming stunts the growth of animals, producing unhealthy and tasteless food.) This gorgeously-illustrated book, which includes an original introduction by the legendary British playwright Alan Bennett, is the summation of a life's work, and a delightful and moving tribute to the deep richness of animal sentience.
Author: Denis Hayes
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393246639
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 397
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Book Description
From leading ecology advocates, a revealing look at our dependence on cows and a passionate appeal for sustainable living. In Cowed, globally recognized environmentalists Denis and Gail Boyer Hayes offer a revealing analysis of how our beneficial, centuries-old relationship with bovines has evolved into one that now endangers us. Long ago, cows provided food and labor to settlers taming the wild frontier and helped the loggers, ranchers, and farmers who shaped the country’s landscape. Our society is built on the backs of bovines who indelibly stamped our culture, politics, and economics. But our national herd has doubled in size over the past hundred years to 93 million, with devastating consequences for the country’s soil and water. Our love affair with dairy and hamburgers doesn’t help either: eating one pound of beef produces a greater carbon footprint than burning a gallon of gasoline. Denis and Gail Hayes begin their story by tracing the co-evolution of cows and humans, starting with majestic horned aurochs, before taking us through the birth of today’s feedlot farms and the threat of mad cow disease. The authors show how cattle farming today has depleted America’s largest aquifer, created festering lagoons of animal waste, and drastically increased methane production. In their quest to find fresh solutions to our bovine problem, the authors take us to farms across the country from Vermont to Washington. They visit worm ranchers who compost cow waste, learn that feeding cows oregano yields surprising benefits, talk to sustainable farmers who care for their cows while contributing to their communities, and point toward a future in which we eat less, but better, beef. In a deeply researched, engagingly personal narrative, Denis and Gail Hayes provide a glimpse into what we can do now to provide a better future for cows, humans, and the world we inhabit. They show how our relationship with cows is part of the story of America itself.
Author: Joann S. Grohman
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 160358479X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
The cow is the most productive, efficient creature on earth. She will give you fresh milk, cream, butter, and cheese, build human health and happiness, and even turn a profit for homesteaders and small farmers who seek to offer her bounty to the local market or neighborhood. She will provide rich manure for your garden or land, and will enrich the quality of your life as you benefit from the resources of the natural world. Quite simply, the family that keeps a cow is a healthy family. Originally published in the early 1970s as The Cow Economy and reprinted many times over, Keeping a Family Cow has launched thousands of holistic small-scale dairy farmers and families raising healthy cows in accordance with their true nature. The book offers answers to frequently asked questions like, 'Should I get a cow?' and 'How Much Space do I need?' in addition to extensive information on: • The health benefits of untreated milk; • How to milk a cow effectively and with ease; • Choosing your dairy breed; • Drying off your cow; • Details on calving and breeding; • The importance of hay quality and how to properly feed your cow; • Fencing and pasture management; • Housing, water systems, and other supplies; • Treating milk fever and other diseases and disorders; • Making butter, yogurt, and cheese, and, of course . . . • . . . Everything else the conventional dairy industry doesn’t tell us! Now revised and updated to incorporate new information on the raw milk debate, the conversation about A1 vs. A2 milk, fully grassfed dairies, more practical advice for everyday chores, and updated procedures for cow emergencies. Keeping a Family Cow has not only stood the test of time, it still remains the go-to inspirational manual for raising a family milk cow nearly forty years after its first publication. Joann Grohman has a lifetime of practical experience that has been bound into this one volume and presented in the spirit of fun and learning.
Author: Sandra Boynton
Publisher: Workman Publishing
ISBN: 0761162143
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 92
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Book Description
From Sandra Boynton—as it could only come from Boynton—an inventive exuberant jumble of a book for the young reader. Amazing Cows is a picture book, a storybook, a book of fun and games—it’s all those things in one. Plus it even includes a startling recording of Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero Completely Unraveled for Orchestra and Kazoos” performed by Sandra Boynton & The Highly Irritating Orchestra, for download. (Running time is 17:14, but seems MUCH longer.) A work of pure obsession, Amazing Cows celebrates cows and offbeat cowness with a miscellany of cow stories, cow poems, cow jokes, and other bovine ephemera. Along the way, expect lively guest appearances by ducks, pigs, and excessive numbers of chickens. There’s a song: "It Had to Be Moo." A game: "Find the Hidden Cows." Famous Barnyard Composers (surely you’ve heard of Wolfgang Amadeus Moozart and Johann Sebastian Bockbockbock). Knock-knock jokes, a cow myth, and an Amazing Cow comic-book adventure: "Trouble on Zebblor 7." Cow fashion. Cow Limericks. How to Speak Cow. Plus so much mooer. Amazing Cows is full-color, 96 pages long, and packed with the kind of silly fun that young readers adore, especially when they can read it to themselves—and then read it to their parents, and then to their little brothers, and then to the family dog. Or the family cow.
Author: Ann Larkin Hansen
Publisher: Fox Chapel Publishing
ISBN: 1935484931
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
Hobby Farms Beef Cattle: Keeping a Small-Scale Herd for Pleasure and Profit, written by Ann Larkin Hansen, serves as an excellent introduction to raising cows for food or simply to graze while mowing and fertilizing the pasture. This colorful guide offers experienced hobby farmers and beginners all of the essential information necessary to purchase and maintain a small herd of beef cattle. While managing her own hobby farm in Wisconsin, Hansen shares her expertise in all things farm and has authored numerous books such as Making Hay, The Organic Farming Manual, and Finding Good Farmland. In this comprehensive book, Hansen corrals the hobby farmer into the world of cowboys and cowgirls: she begins, “Beef cattle are as much at home on the hobby farm as they are on the range.” This colorful primer begins with the basics, from biological traits and breeds to behavior and life cycle, and describes exactly what’s required for a hobby farmer to maintain a herd of cattle—the four F’s—fencing, feed, fields, and facilities. Given the expense involved in the purchase and maintenance of beef cattle, all hobby farmers will welcome Hansen’s sound and sensible advice on buying the right cattle, whether steer calves for meat or breeding stock for building up a herd. The buying chapter helps farmers focus on what to look for when selecting cattle; how cows, heifers, and bulls are priced; where to purchase; and how to get cattle to your farm. The feeding and nutrition of cattle is a complicated topic, and Hansen breaks it down into the three basic components that every keeper needs to understand: pasture, hay, and grain. With directness and clarity, she explains the ins and outs of grazing, selecting ideal foodstuffs, using salt and minerals, and maintaining good weight on the herd. The reader can rely on her expert advice to learn the fundamentals of handling cattle, including herding, loading, and transporting cattle, as well as keeping beef cattle healthy through preventive methods, vaccinations, parasite control and veterinary assistance. For hobby farmers planning to breed their livestock, Beef Cattle includes a chapter on pairing cows and heifers, the actual breeding, artificial insemination, the care of pregnant cows, calving, caring for the young, and weaning calves. The final chapter of the book “Marketing and Processing Your Cattle” is geared toward hobby farmers looking to get beef processed, grade meat, and sell the final product. Sidebars of fun trivia, stories from farmers, and useful advice appear throughout the handbook. A glossary of over 100 terms; an appendix of health issues; a resource section of useful websites, books, and periodicals; and a detailed index complete the book.
Author: David Small
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780758725776
Category : Children's poetry
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Humorous rhymes about George Washington's farm where the cows wear dresses, the pigs wear wigs, and the sheep are scholars.
Author: John Connell
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 1783784199
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
Farming has been in John Connell's family for generations, but he never intended to follow in his father's footsteps. Until, one winter, he finds himself back on the farm and begins to learn the ways of the farmer and the way of the cows. Connell records the hypnotic rhythm of the farming day - cleaning the outhouses, milking the herd, tending to sickly lambs, helping the cows give birth. But alongside the routine events, there are the unforeseen moments when things go wrong: when a calf fails to thrive, when a sheep goes missing, when illness breaks out, when depression takes hold, when an argument erupts and things are said that cannot be unsaid. The Cow Book is the story of a calving season. It is also the story of the cow itself, from its domestication and worship as a God by the Ancient Egyptians to the modern practice of mechanized herds, via the figure of the cowboy, the destruction of the American buffalo, the demise of the aboriginal jackaroos and the consequences of BSE. And, above all, it is the story of Connell's life as a farmer, of his relationship with his birthplace of County Longford, with the community around the family farm, with the animals he tends, and with his father.
Author: Karma Wilson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439156166
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
The horse loves hay, the chickens need feed, the geese munch on corn, the hogs devour slop, the dog eats treats, but the cow loves…COOKIES? With an original twist on the ordinary barnyard book, the latest read-aloud from bestselling author Karma Wilson is a clever exploration of a curious incident on the farm. As the farmer makes his rounds each day, most of the animals chew on the foods a young reader would expect. But when it’s time to feed the cow, she feasts on a special treat. Wilson’s signature style and Marcellus Hall’s spirited watercolors will delight children on and off the farm—because when it comes down to it, who doesn’t love milk and cookies?
Author: Matthew Stokoe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780987453662
Category : Alienation (Social psychology)
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Twenty-five-year-old Steven faces a bleak life with a sadistic mother and a job at a slaughterhouse where he is confronted with extreme violence and death.
Author: Diana Rodgers
Publisher: BenBella Books
ISBN: 1950665119
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
We're told that if we care about our health—or our planet—eliminating red meat from our diets is crucial. That beef is bad for us and cattle farming is horrible for the environment. But science says otherwise. Beef is framed as the most environmentally destructive and least healthy of meats. We're often told that the only solution is to reduce or quit red meat entirely. But despite what anti-meat groups, vegan celebrities, and some health experts say, plant-based agriculture is far from a perfect solution. In Sacred Cow, registered dietitian Diana Rodgers and former research biochemist and New York Times bestselling author Robb Wolf explore the quandaries we face in raising and eating animals—focusing on the largest (and most maligned) of farmed animals, the cow. Taking a critical look at the assumptions and misinformation about meat, Sacred Cow points out the flaws in our current food system and in the proposed "solutions." Inside, Rodgers and Wolf reveal contrarian but science-based findings, such as: • Meat and animal fat are essential for our bodies. • A sustainable food system cannot exist without animals. • A vegan diet may destroy more life than sustainable cattle farming. • Regenerative cattle ranching is one of our best tools at mitigating climate change. You'll also find practical guidance on how to support sustainable farms and a 30-day challenge to help you transition to a healthful and conscientious diet. With scientific rigor, deep compassion, and wit, Rodgers and Wolf argue unequivocally that meat (done right) should have a place on the table. It's not the cow, it's the how!
