Small-Scale Livestock Farming PDF Download

Author: Carol Ekarius
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 1603427341
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Full of practical everyday advice, this guide explains how a natural, organic approach to livestock farming produces healthy animals, reduces costs, and increases your operation’s self-sufficiency. Livestock expert Carol Ekarius helps you create a viable farm plan, choose suitable livestock, care for your animals’ health, and confidently manage housing, fencing, and feeding. Case studies of successful farmers provide inspiration as you learn everything you need to know to run a prosperous livestock farm and make the lifestyle of your dreams a reality. This publication conforms to the EPUB Accessibility specification at WCAG 2.0 Level AA.

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: Rebecca Thistlethwaite
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603585540
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Including information on cattle, pigs, poultry, sheep, and goats, and exotics like bison, rabbits, elk, and deer How can anyone from a backyard hobbyist to a large-scale rancher go about raising and selling ethically produced meats directly to consumers, restaurants, and butcher shops? With the rising consumer interest in grass-fed, pasture-raised, and antibiotic-free meats, how can farmers most effectively tap into those markets and become more profitable? The regulations and logistics can be daunting enough to turn away most would-be livestock farmers, and finding and keeping their customers challenges the rest. Farmer, consultant, and author Rebecca Thistlethwaite (Farms with a Future) and her husband and coauthor, Jim Dunlop, both have extensive experience raising a variety of pastured livestock in California and now on their homestead farm in Oregon. The New Livestock Farmer provides pasture-based production essentials for a wide range of animals, from common farm animals (cattle, poultry, pigs, sheep, and goats) to more exotic species (bison, rabbits, elk, and deer). Each species chapter discusses the unique requirements of that animal, then delves into the steps it takes to prepare and get them to market. Profiles of more than fifteen meat producers highlight some of the creative ways these innovative farmers are raising animals and direct-marketing superior-quality meats. In addition, the book contains information on a variety of vital topics: • Governmental regulations and how they differ from state to state; • Slaughtering and butchering logistics, including on-farm and mobile processing options and sample cutting sheets; • Packaging, labeling, and cold-storage considerations; • Principled marketing practices; and • Financial management, pricing, and other business essentials. This book is must reading for anyone who is serious about raising meat animals ethically, outside of the current consolidated, unsustainable CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) system. It offers a clear, thorough, well-organized guide to a subject that will become increasingly important as the market demand for pasture-raised meat grows stronger.

Author: Terri Paajanen
Publisher: Atlantic Publishing Company
ISBN: 1601383819
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
This book will show any potential farmer how to start raising livestock and marketing it to the organic, natural lifestyle community that so fervently seeks out these products. You will learn how to start the basic outline for your new small farm, including which livestock to raise, how to build their pens and habitat, and what you will be feeding them to maintain a healthy, organic farm. Read about the basics of animal husbandry, from genetics and breeding to feeding, building locations, and proper health and reproductive care. You will discover how to find yourself the right niche for selling your products and what legalities you must see to, as well as get valuable information about the butchering and processing phase of raising animals for food --

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309168643
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Air Emissions from Animal Feeding Operations: Current Knowledge, Future Needs discusses the need for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to implement a new method for estimating the amount of ammonia, nitrous oxide, methane, and other pollutants emitted from livestock and poultry farms, and for determining how these emissions are dispersed in the atmosphere. The committee calls for the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish a joint council to coordinate and oversee short - and long-term research to estimate emissions from animal feeding operations accurately and to develop mitigation strategies. Their recommendation was for the joint council to focus its efforts first on those pollutants that pose the greatest risk to the environment and public health.

Author: John Fraser Hart
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813922294
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Few Americans know much about contemporary farming, which has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. In The Changing Scale of American Agriculture, the award-winning geographer and landscape historian John Fraser Hart describes the transformation of farming from the mid-twentieth century, when small family farms were still viable, to the present, when a farm must sell at least $250,000 of farm products each year to provide an acceptable level of living for a family. The increased scale of agriculture has outmoded the Jeffersonian ideal of small, self-sufficient farms. In the past farmers kept a variety of livestock and grew several crops, but modern family farms have become highly specialized in producing a single type of livestock or one or two crops. As farms have become larger and more specialized, their number has declined. Hart contends that modern family farms need to become integrated into tightly orchestrated food-supply chains in order to thrive, and these complex new organizations of large-scale production require managerial skills of the highest order. According to Hart, this trend is not only inevitable, but it is beneficial, because it produces the food American consumers want to buy at prices they can afford. Although Hart provides the statistics and clear analysis such a study requires, his book focuses on interviews with farmers: those who have shifted from mixed crop-and-livestock farming to cash-grain farming in the Midwest agricultural heartland; beef, dairy, chicken, egg, turkey, and hog producers around the periphery of the heartland; and specialty crop producers on the East and West Coasts. These invaluable case studies bring the reader into direct personal contact with the entrepreneurs who are changing American agriculture. Hart believes that modern large-scale farmers have been criticized unfairly, and The Changing Scale of American Agriculture, the result of decades of research, is his attempt to tell their side of the story.

Author: Temple Grandin
Publisher: Storey Publishing
ISBN: 1612127444
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Award-winning author Temple Grandin is famous for her groundbreaking approach to decoding animal behavior. Now she extends her expert guidance to small-scale farming operations. Grandin’s fascinating explanations of how herd animals think — describing their senses, fears, instincts, and memories — and how to analyze their behavior, will help you handle your livestock more safely and effectively. You’ll learn to become a skilled observer of animal movement and behavior, and detailed illustrations will help you set up simple and efficient facilities for managing a small herd of 3 to 25 cattle or pigs, or 5 to 100 goats or sheep.

Author: Clayton Campanhola
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128121351
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 611

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Book Description
Sustainable Food and Agriculture: An Integrated Approach is the first book to look at the imminent threats to sustainable food security through a cross-sectoral lens. As the world faces food supply challenges posed by the declining growth rate of agricultural productivity, accelerated deterioration of quantity and quality of natural resources that underpin agricultural production, climate change, and hunger, poverty and malnutrition, a multi-faced understanding is key to identifying practical solutions. This book gives stakeholders a common vision, concept and methods that are based on proven and widely agreed strategies for continuous improvement in sustainability at different scales. While information on policies and technologies that would enhance productivity and sustainability of individual agricultural sectors is available to some extent, literature is practically devoid of information and experiences for countries and communities considering a comprehensive approach (cross-sectoral policies, strategies and technologies) to SFA. This book is the first effort to fill this gap, providing information on proven options for enhancing productivity, profitability, equity and environmental sustainability of individual sectors and, in addition, how to identify opportunities and actions for exploiting cross-sectoral synergies. - Provides proven options of integrated technologies and policies, helping new programs identify appropriate existing programs - Presents mechanisms/tools for balancing trade-offs and proposes indicators to facilitate decision-making and progress measurement - Positions a comprehensive and informed review of issues in one place for effective education, comparison and evaluation

Author: Gianaclis Caldwell
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603585001
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Caldwell offers readers a balanced perspective on the current regulatory environment in which raw-milk lovers find themselves. Keepers of cows, goats, or sheep will benefit from information on designing a well-functioning small dairy, choosing equipment, and understanding myriad processes, including details about the business of making milk; managing the farm to create superior milk; understanding the microbiology of milk; and risk-reduction plans to have in place prior to selling raw milk.

Author: Jacques-Eric Bergez
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030019535
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This Open Access book presents feedback from the ‘Territorial Agroecological Transition in Action’- TATA-BOX research project, which was devoted to these specific issues. The multidisciplinary and multi-organisation research team steered a four-year action-research process in two territories of France. It also presents: i) the key dimensions to be considered when dealing with agroecological transition: diversity of agriculture models, management of uncertainties, polycentric governance, autonomies, and role of actors’ networks; ii) an operational and original participatory process and associated boundary tools to support local stakeholders in shifting from a shared diagnosis to a shared action plan for transition, and in so doing developing mutual understanding and involvement; iii) an analysis of the main effects of the methodology on research organisation and on stakeholders’ development and application; iv) critical analysis and foresights on the main outcomes of TATA-BOX, provided by external researchers.