The Dairy Goat Handbook: For Backyard, Homestead, and Small Farm

by Ann Starbard

Overview

The Dairy Goat Handbook explains everything goat keepers need to know about their animals, from the best ways to keep them healthy to methods for making delicious goat cheese.

The Dairy Goat Handbook is a guidebook for those who would like to raise dairy goats - or dream of raising dairy goats and want to know how to begin and maintain a successful herd.

There are other books on the business of keeping dairy goats, but none quite like this. Written by a dairy goat farmer, this guide combines a deep knowledge of the animals themselves with fifteen years of experience running a successful business. Fully illustrated with photographs of life on a working dairy farm the goats, the farm, the dairy equipment, and the cheese and milk this book explains as well as celebrates the life of a dairy goat farmer.

The author, Ann Starbard, owns Crystal Brook Farm in Sterling, Massachusetts, where she and her husband raise dairy goats and make fresh goat cheese that they sell onsite, at farmers' markets, and at restaurants. Ann explains the details of raising goats and running a dairy in simple, clear, easy-to-understand language; this is a book for everyone interested in the business of raising dairy goats.

Customer Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780760347317
Publisher:	Voyageur Press
Publication date:	06/05/2015
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	271,950
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Ann Starbard was raised on a dairy cow farm in Pennsylvania and has raised dairy goats on Crystal Brook Farm in Massachusetts for fifteen years. She and her husband, Eric, have built a thriving business with the goat cheese they make on the farm. They sell their cheese at the farm, at farmers' markets, at restaurants, and at more than twenty retail outlets, including two Whole Foods stores (one in Boston and one in Cambridge). Starbard maintains the farm's website (www.crystalbrookfarm.com) and has written previously on dairy goats; most recently she co-authored a chapter in a dairy goat management book being released by Winrock International, an international nonprofit group.

Editorial Reviews

05/04/2015
Readers who have been sucked in by the viral videos of goats balancing on a steel ribbon or screaming like humans may think raising goats would be fun and easy. Starbard, a goat farmer with 15 years’ experience raising dairy goats and making and selling goat cheese, doesn’t lead the reader on with such cuteness. She gives a comprehensive breakdown on goat raising, from selecting them to marketing their products, but also doesn’t ignore all the adorable by-products of goat farming (the climbing, the hopping, the affection, the playful butting). It’s not all fun; goats must be milked twice a day, ten months a year. They need other goats around for socializing, eat through fences, catch cold easily, and must be sheltered. Some kids are spoiled rotten and don’t respect authority. The last books with this much detail may have been the husbandry journals published in the 1950s and ’60s. Those who want to raise “one of the most adaptable and productive domesticated animals on our planet” will find Starbard’s advice invaluable. Color photos provide a trip (a collective noun for goats) of adorable animals. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"...gives a comprehensive breakdown on goat raising, from selecting them to marketing their products, but also doesn't ignore all the adorable by-products of goat farming (the climbing, the hopping, the affection, the playful butting)." - Publishers Weekly

"This book is an excellent guide for anyone interested in raising goats, breeding, milking, and making or marketing products." - FarmBarbie.com

From the Publisher