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Couple book reviews

Well I have been reading my rear end off doing research for the homestead so today I am going to talk about a couple of the books I read or am in the process of reading if I may.

The first is Storey’s Guide to Raising Rabbits by Bob Bennett.  To be honest it was kind of hard to get by the first chapter, while the information is good the author comes across as condescending stating a lot of opinions (which granted at backed up with over 50 years of experience) and presenting them as facts.  He comes off as a such a breed snob to the point I had to do research to see if he was a president of some breed association or something. 

The book really should be call Storey’s Guide to Commercially Raising Rabbits.  Mr. Bennett, looks at everything through a commercial lens, and that is not really what I want to do, but he assumes that is the only reason to raise rabbits, to make money on them.  The book is not really all that useful for what I am looking at, he does not cover colony raising, again thinking raising them in raised cages to be the only option.  The section on feed covers one thing, Pellets, page after page about why pellets are the perfect food, again would not surprise me to find he is a stock owner in the feed company.  In Chapter 8 he finally does at least touch on feeling rabbits some tidbits from the garden.  As a whole I was pretty disappointed in this book and while there are bits and pieces I will use (such as starting with two buck and two does rather than 1 buck and 3 does.) over all I will probably be looking for another book that focuses on rabbits as part of a homestead.

The next is “Raising Goats Naturally” by Deborah Niemann.  Overall I liked this book it covered a lot of information and will be a book I am likely to reference over and over again over the years.  I really liked all of the pictures and illustrations that make it easy to understand.  The section on parasites was really an eye opener, and a little intimidating!  I am also sure I will go back to the book when I start to get established in order to get the first aid list for goats!  The section on the birthing process also introduced me to a long list of information I did not know that I am sure will come in handy when the day comes for the goats to give birth!

The book went into a lot of details in the milking of goats but did not really touch on the butchering process much at all.  I mean she used two chapters on making cheese and a separate chapter on goat milk soap but used a total of 5 pages to cover the meat and one of those pages was recipes! Granted I loved all of the information on milking and the equipment recommended, all information I needed to know and the cheese was something I really wanted to know just wish she could have covered a little more with the butchering.  She also threw in a page of using hides for leather and I really had not given much through to that before.


The one other issue I had with this book was that it did not include anything on the Kinder Goats that I plan to raise.  With the book being published in 2013 I really did not see a reason they were not included unless perhaps the author did not have experience with them.

Over all I recommend Raising Goats Naturally for any homesteader and if Homesteading is your goal I would not recommend Storey's Guide to Raising Rabbits.

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