Based on a decade of study, this book provides a scholarly overview of organic dairy politics, showing how politics, policy, and protest both inside and outside of agriculture can determine a future of pastoral landscapes resembling an earlier time in the western world or, alternatively, one made of dystopian ruralities.

Behaving like the other sex has been observed in a number of species of mammals, although such behaviour is generally more common in the female than the male. This study discusses why such capacity is so common in sexually differentiated animals. The contributors gather together information on the generation of heterotypical sexual behaviour and on certain forms of aggression. They provide a review of the current state of knowledge from both animal experimentation and human clinical studies, looking at the role of physiological mechanisms and experiences in such controversial topics as the genesis of homosexuality.

Until recently, knowledge of ruminant gut microbiology was primarily obtained using classical culture based techniques, which probably only account for 10 to 20% of the rumen microbial population. New gene-based technologies can now be employed to examine microbial diversity through the use of small sub-unit ribosomal DNA analysis (e.g. 16S rDNA) and to understand the function of complex microbial ecosystems in the rumen through metagenomic analysis. These technologies have the potential to revolutionize the understanding of rumen function and will overcome the limitations of classical based techniques, including isolation and taxonomic identification of strains important to efficient rumen function and better understanding of the roles of microorganisms in relation to achieving high productivity and decreasing environmental pollutants. This book presents a comprehensive up-to-date account of the methodologies and protocols for conventional and modern molecular techniques that are currently in use for studying the gut microbial ecology of ruminants. Each chapter has been contributed by experts in the field and methods have been presented in a recipe-like format designed for direct practical use in the laboratory and also to provide insight into the most appropriate techniques, their applications and the type of information that could be expected. The techniques and procedures described are also relevant and adaptable to other gastrointestinal ecosystems and the microbiology of anaerobic environments in general. This manual will a ~demystifya (TM) the methods in molecular microbial ecology for readers who are novice in the field but are excited by the prospects of the technology. Itwould also be invaluable for the experienced workers striving for giving new dimension to their research a" expanding the work in other fields and initiating cross-cutting activities.

This book deals with all aspects of goat culture, from breeding to feeding, together with the care and treatment of the milk and the making of butter and cheese. The author is well known for her writings and broadcast on the subject, for she draws from a thorough practical knowledge and a lifetime's experience. Contents Include: Why Not Keep a Goat? Breeds and Strains How to Choose a Goat Housing The Use and Abuse of Pasture Feeding Breeding The In-Kid Nanny Kid Rearing Male Goats General Management Milking, and The Care of Milk Butter and Cheese From Goats' Milk How To Treat a Sick Goat What Doctors Say About Goats' Milk

The findings presented in this volume represent a concerted effort to develop a more inclusive form of reindeer management for northernmost Europe. Our guiding principle has been to foster a new paradigm of participatory research. We wish to move beyond the historical reliance on western approaches to basic and applied science. These have been concerned prim- ily with interactions between herded animals and the various components of their biophysical environment, e. g. , plants, insects, predators, climate, and others. In our view,sociocultural and economic drivers,along with herders' experience-based knowledge,gain equal currency in the effort to understand how management may mitigate against the negative aspects of the challenges modern herding faces, while also exploring concepts of sustainability from different perspectives (see also Jernsletten and Klokov 2002; Kankaanpaa et al. 2002; Ulvevadet and Klokov 2004). This broadening of the pool of disciplines and local,national,and int- national stakeholders in policy-relevant research invariably complicates v- tually all aspects of the research process. Multidisciplinary or, in our sense, transdisciplinary approaches also require extraordinary effort from all p- ticipants if they are to succeed. As such, those approaches should not be undertaken lightly, nor without personnel who possess appropriate expe- ence in cooperating with those of different disciplines and, preferably, also with relevant practitioners and public social and administrative institutions. In such settings the potential for misunderstandings is quite high.

Sepp Holzer farms steep mountainsides in Austria 1,500 meters above sea level. His farm is an intricate network of terraces, raised beds, ponds, waterways and tracks, well covered with productive fruit trees and other vegetation, with the farmhouse neatly nestling amongst them. This is in dramatic contrast to his neighbors' spruce monocultures.In this book, Holzer shares the skill and knowledge acquired over his lifetime. He covers every aspect of his farming methods, not just how to create a holistic system on the farm itself, but how to make a living from it. Holzer writes about everything from the overall concepts, down to the practical details.In Sepp Holzer's Permaculturereaders will learn:

How he sets up a permaculture system

The fruit varieties he has found best for permaculture growing

How to construct terraces, ponds, and waterways

How to build shelters for animals and how to work with them on the land

How to cultivate edible mushrooms in the garden and on the farm

and much more

Holzer offers a wealth of information for the gardener, smallholder or alternative farmer yet the book's greatest value is the attitudes it teaches. He reveals the thinking processes based on principles found in nature that create his productive systems. These can be applied anywhere.

You can grow all the fruit and vegetables your family needs, raise animals for meat and eggs, keep fish and bees, and even produce firewood on a plot of land of just one acre or less - alongside your work and family life. Whether you have a garden, a paddock or perhaps the corner of a field, Sally Morgan guides you through: How to lay out your plot - including fencing and polytunnels or greenhouses Managing soil fertility Growing fruit and vegetables throughout the year Keeping livestock: poultry, pigs, sheep and goats Producing fish with aquaponics Filled with practical advice, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to be more self-sufficient and live a more sustainable life.

This early work on poultry husbandry is a fascinating read for any poultry enthusiast, but also contains much information that is still useful and practical today. It will prove of much interest to the amateur poultry keeper as well as those in the field of agriculture. Tables, diagrams and photographs accompany the text. Contents Include: The Stock, Housing, Feeding, Breeding, Incubation, Rearing, Management, Ducks/Geese/Turkeys/Bantams, and Hygiene and Sanitation on the Poultry Farm. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This book will help beekeepers understand the fundamentals of beekeeping science. Written in plain and accessible language by actual researchers, it should be part of every beekeeper's library. The respective chapters not only present raw data; they also explain how to read and understand the most common figures. With topics ranging from honeybee nutrition to strains of Varroa resistant bees, from the effects of pesticide chemicals to understanding diseases, and including a discussion of venom allergies, the book provides essential "knowhow" that beekeepers will benefit from every time they inspect their hives. Further, each chapter ends with the author explaining how beekeepers can (or cannot) directly utilize the information to enhance their beekeeping operation. The text is structured to facilitate ease of use, with each author addressing the same four issues: 1) What are the specific purposes or goals of these experiments? Or more simply: what have these studies taught us? 2) How should a non-scientist read the data generated? 3) What are the key points in relation to practicing beekeepers' goals? 4) How can the data or techniques discussed be applied by beekeepers in their own apiaries? This approach allows readers to look up specific information quickly, understand it and even put it to use without having to read entire chapters. Further, the chapters are highly readable and concise. As such, the book offers a valuable guide and faithful companion for all beekeepers, one they can use day in and day out.

****A Sunday Times bestseller***

***A Times Book of the Year 2017***

WITH A FOREWORD BY ALAN BENNETT

'A lovely, thoughtful little book about the intelligence of cows.' James Rebanks, author of The Shepherd's Life

Cows are as varied as people. They can be highly intelligent or slow to understand, vain, considerate, proud, shy or inventive.

Although much of a cow's day is spent eating, they always find time for extra-curricular activities such as babysitting, playing hide and seek, blackberry-picking or fighting a tree.

This is an affectionate record of a hitherto secret world.

Originally published in 1924 and regularly revised since then, this book is an exhaustive study of the craft of pig-keeping. Full of detailed instructions from a more natural era of farming, this book tels all that you need to now to successfully rear pigs, and is still of great practical use today. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include: What's Wrong? - The Danish System - The Open-Air System - The Breeds - The Breeding Herd - Farrowing and Weaning - The Foods - Feeding - Registration and Identification Marks - Vitamins - The Absorption of Foods - Balanced Rations - Rations For In-Pig Sows and Gilts - Rations For Sows With Young - Rations For Young Pigs - Rations For Pigs From 3 to 6 Months Old - Rations For Fattening Pigs - Weighing - Diseases - Short Notes - The Outlook - Imports of Bacon, Hams, Pork and Lard - Pig Societies - Breeders' Tables - Memoranda

This book provides a lucid and compelling analysis of the BSE crisis and how policy-making processes were managed, and of how and why they culminated in catastrophic failure. It is the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the relationship between science and politics in BSE policy-making. The book re-assesses the conclusions of the Phillips enquiry into the UK government's handling of the BSE epidemic as well as extending and supplementing the analysis. The book evaluates emerging public health policy changes in the light of the experience with the BSE crisis. The ways in which risks, from challenges such as BSE, GM crops, mobile phone masts and global warming, used to be assessed and managed are no longer adequate or acceptable. Traditional arrangements are no longer seen as having either scientific or democratic legitimacy. Governments, scientific advisors, and many stakeholder groups recognise that a new approach to risk policy-making is needed. New structures and processes should be able to provide greater scientific and democratic legitimacy. While BSE policy-making in the UK is a central focus of BSE: risk, science and governance comparisons with policy-making at the European Commission and other European countries are also provided. The authors develop an analysis of how and why BSE policy-making failed and then derive a general set of lessons about how science-based risk policy-making should be understood and re-organised. Those lessons are applicable across the entire field of risk policy-making and can apply in all jurisdictions. The book is directed at those involved in science policy, risk and public health as well as public officials, scientists and policy makers responsible for dealing with issues of risk, public health and policy making. The book will provide a unique analysis based on very real issues of interest across Europe. The authors are well-respected researchers who have published widely on this subject and have recently completed a multi-country study of how BSE has been handled.

This fascinating work is thoroughly recommended for inclusion on the bookshelf of all poultry enthusiasts. Equally as valuable to an amateur poultry keeper as to those in the agricultural industry its 191 pages contain a wealth of information and anecdote on a variety of aspects of poultry husbandry. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE A naturalist's passionate dive into the lives of bees (of all stripes)-and the natural world in her own backyard Brigit Strawbridge Howard was shocked the day she realised she knew more about the French Revolution than she did about her native trees. And birds. And wildflowers. And bees. The thought stopped her-quite literally-in her tracks. But that day was also the start of a journey, one filled with silver birches and hairy-footed flower bees, skylarks, and rosebay willow herb, and the joy that comes with deepening one's relationship with place. Dancing with Bees is Strawbridge Howard's charming and eloquent account of a return to noticing, to rediscovering a perspective on the world that had somehow been lost to her for decades and to reconnecting with the natural world. With special care and attention to the plight of pollinators, including honeybees, bumblebees, and solitary bees, and what we can do to help them, Strawbridge Howard shares fascinating details of the lives of flora and fauna that have filled her days with ever-increasing wonder and delight.

In the last two decades, there has been an increased awareness of the traditions and issues that link aboriginal people across the circumpolar North. One of the key aspects of the lives of circumpolar peoples, be they in Scandinavia, Alaska, Russia, or Canada, is their relationship to the wild animals that support them. Although divided for most of the 20th Century by various national trading blocks, and the Cold War, aboriginal people in each region share common stories about the various capitalist and socialist states that claimed control over their lands and animals. Now, aboriginal peoples throughout the region are reclaiming their rights. This volume is the first to give a well-rounded portrait of wildlife management, aboriginal rights, and politics in the circumpolar north. The book reveals unexpected continuities between socialist and capitalist ecological styles, as well as addressing the problems facing a new era of cultural exchanges between aboriginal peoples in each region.

This book argues that qualitative methods, ethnography included, have tended to focus on the human at the cost of understanding humans and animals in relation, and that ethnography should evolve to account for the relationships between humans and other species. Intellectual recognition of this has arrived within the field of human-animal studies and in the philosophical development of posthumanism but there are few practical guidelines for research. Taking this problem as a starting point, the authors draw on a wide array of examples from visual methods, ethnodrama, poetry and movement studies to consider the political, philosophical and practical consequences of posthuman methods. They outline the possibilities for creative new forms of ethnography that eschew simplistic binaries between humans and animals. Ethnography after Humanism suggests how researchers could conduct different forms of fieldwork and writing to include animals more fruitfully and will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including human-animal studies, sociology, criminology, animal geography, anthropology, social theory and natural resources.

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.

Exam Board: Pearson BTEC Academic Level: BTEC National Subject: Animal Management First teaching: September 2016 First Exams: Summer 2017 For all four of the externally assessed units 1, 2 and 3. Builds confidence with scaffolded practice questions. Unguided questions that allow students to test their own knowledge and skills in advance of assessment. Clear unit-by-unit correspondence between this Workbook and the Revision Guide and ActiveBook.

Homing phenomena must be considered an important aspect of animal behaviour on account of their frequent occurrence, their survival value, and the variety of the mechanisms involved. Many species regularly rely on their ability to home or reach other familiar sites, but how they manage to do this is often uncertain. In many cases the goal is attained in the absence of any sensory contact, by mechanisms of indirect orientation whose complexity and sophistication have for a long time challenged the skill and patience of many researchers. A series of problems of increasing difficulty have to be overcome; researchers have to discover the nature of orienting cues, the sensory windows involved, the role of inherited and acquired information, and, eventually, how the central mechanisms process information and control motory responses. Naturally, this book emphasizes targets achieved rather than areas unexplored and mysteries unsolved. Even so, the reader will quickly realize that our knowledge of phenomena and mechanisms has progressed to different degrees in different animal groups, ranging from the mere description of homing behaviour to a satisfactory insight into some underlying mechanisms. In the last few dacades there have been promising developments in the study of animal homing, since new approaches have been tried out, and new species and groups have been investigated. Despite this, homing phenomena have not recently been the object of exhaustive reviews and there is a tendency for them to be neglected in general treatises on animal behaviour.