The third edition of The Laboratory Rat features updated information on a variety of topics, including rats as research models for basic and translational research in areas such as genomics, alcoholism, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, neuroscience, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, regenerative medicine, and infectious disease. New information related to the husbandry and veterinary care of rats is provided including topics related to nutrition, reproduction, anesthesia and surgery, infectious and noninfectious disease, and the care of surgical and other fragile models. It is a premier source of information on the laboratory rat, this book will be of interest to veterinary and medical students, senior graduate students, postdocs and researchers who utilize animals in biomedical research.

Born to Farm sheds light upon the enormous changes that have taken place in farming over the past 90 years, as seen through the eyes of one of the participants. It is an absorbing and fascinating autobiography; the author's enthusiasm and quest for knowledge, his ingenuity and practical skills, have enabled him to keep abreast of changes in the wider world while building up the family farming enterprise in Suffolk. The author's early memories of the 1930s and of his school days, evoke a bygone era in the countryside and on the farm. Lifelong learning is a theme which runs through the book. Opportunities for learning and travel through the Young Farmers' Club, for example, are described with humour and give an insight into farming both in the UK and the USA during the 1950s. Back on Red House Farm, David Black deals with everyday challenges as he progresses from dogsbody to decision-maker. Problem-solving is part of a farmer's life and no aspect of the business escapes his steady hand and scrutiny. Gradually, the huge variety of crops grown is streamlined but not before we've learned about harnessing horses and draining the land, about virus-free strawberry plants and fields of tulips and peonies, of cocksfoot and fescue. Pigs are an important aspect of the family business and the evolution of suitable feed mixes, pig housing, breeding and outdoor rearing, integrated with cereal production and milling on the farm, makes compelling reading. Changes to field sizes and to farm buildings and the provision of housing for farm workers are all covered, with many interesting anecdotes. The value of sharing knowledge and of co-operation with other farmers - both formally and informally - is made apparent. The author is full of admiration for the contributions of others, but modest about his own considerable achievements. Hard work, encouragement of others, and a 'can do' attitude summarise his approach. Family life is explored and glimpses into village life provide an interesting social history of the period. Working alongside family members has its own rewards and challenges and the journey has begun along the path to secure a way forward for future generations.

Viewers of films and television shows might imagine the dude ranch as something not quite legitimate, a place where city dwellers pretend to be cowboys in amusingly inauthentic fashion. But the tradition of the dude ranch, America's original western vacation, is much more interesting and deeply connected with the culture and history of the American West. In American Dude Ranch, Lynn Downey opens new perspectives on this buckaroo getaway, with all its implications for deciphering the American imagination. Dude ranching began in the 1880s when cattle ranches ruled the West. Men, and a few women, left the comforts of their eastern lives to experience the world of the cowboy. But by the end of the century, the cattleman's West was fading, and many ranchers turned to wrangling dudes instead of livestock. What began as a way for ranching to survive became a new industry, and as the twentieth century progressed, the dude ranch wove its way into American life and culture. Wyoming dude ranches hosted silent picture shoots, superstars such as Gene Autry were featured in dude film plots, fashion designers and companies like Levi Strauss & Co. replicated the films' western styles, and novelists Zane Grey and Mary Roberts Rinehart moved dude ranching into popular literature. Downey follows dude ranching across the years, tracing its influence on everything from clothing to cooking and showing how ranchers adapted to changing times and vacation trends. Her book also offers a rare look at women's place in this story, as they found personal and professional satisfaction in running their own dude ranches. However contested and complicated, western history is one of America's national origin stories that we turn to in times of cultural upheaval. Dude ranches provide a tangible link from the real to the imagined past, and their persistence and popularity demonstrate how significant this link remains. This book tells their story-in all its familiar, eccentric, and often surprising detail.

After riding a stagecoach in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show at Madison Square Garden in 1910, Princeton student Irving H. "Larry" Larom was determined to live a life in the West. Later that year, Larom made the first of four summer trips to Wyoming, where he was a guest at Jim McLaughlin's Valley Ranch, nestled in a scenic valley in the upper South Fork of the Shoshone River. Larom became so enamored of the magnificent wilderness environment and the prospects of becoming a dude rancher that he abandoned his life as a New York socialite. Partnering with Brooks Brothers heir and Yale student Winthrop Brooks, he purchased Valley Ranch in 1915.A welcome study of early dude ranch development, Dude Ranching in Yellowstone Country preserves the history of an important Wyoming ranch and the man who built it. W. Hudson Kensel recounts the life of Larom, whose East Coast connections to financial resources and wealthy guests enabled him to transform McLaughlin's small homestead into a major tourist destination and prep school on the edge of Yellowstone National Park. The purchase of Valley Ranch coincided with the opening of Yellowstone to automobile traffic and the onset of World War I. Valley Ranch benefited as western parks and dude ranches became destinations for weary city dwellers and travelers looking for a vacation alternative to war-torn Europe. Besides making the ranch a success, Larom became a civic leader in Cody, Wyoming, a nationally recognized conservationist, and a founder and longtime president of the Dude Ranchers Association. Kensel draws on Larom's papers, local and national newspaper coverage, records of the ranch's prep school, and memories of the citizens and pioneers of northwestern Wyoming to flesh out the story of Valley Ranch as a local and national institution with important influences on conservation, youth education, and the development of western tourism.

This monumental text-reference places in clear persepctive the importance of nutritional assessments to the ecology and biology of ruminants and other nonruminant herbivorous mammals. Now extensively revised and significantly expanded, it reflects the changes and growth in ruminant nutrition and related ecology since 1982. Among the subjects Peter J. Van Soest covers are nutritional constraints, mineral nutrition, rumen fermentation, microbial ecology, utilization of fibrous carbohydrates, application of ruminant precepts to fermentive digestion in nonruminants, as well as taxonomy, evolution, nonruminant competitors, gastrointestinal anatomies, feeding behavior, and problems fo animal size. He also discusses methods of evaluation, nutritive value, physical struture and chemical composition of feeds, forages, and broses, the effects of lignification, and ecology of plant self-protection, in addition to metabolism of energy, protein, lipids, control of feed intake, mathematical models of animal function, digestive flow, and net energy. Van Soest has introduced a number of changes in this edition, including new illustrations and tables. He places nutritional studies in historical context to show not only the effectiveness of nutritional approaches but also why nutrition is of fundamental importance to issues of world conservation. He has extended precepts of ruminant nutritional ecology to such distant adaptations as the giant panda and streamlined conceptual issues in a clearer logical progression, with emphasis on mechanistic causal interrelationships. Peter J. Van Soest is Professor of Animal Nutrition in the Department of Animal Science and the Division of Nutritional Sciences at the New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University.