Ten species in one book: chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, rabbits, goats, sheep, pigs, cattle and bees. Gail Damerow edited it, and she wrote Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, which is the reference most American poultry keepers already own. What she has assembled here is the version for a person with a large garden rather than acreage.

It starts where it should start, with breed. The labeled charts sort birds into egg breeds, meat breeds and dual purpose breeds, because a bird bred to lay is not the bird you want in the pot, and choosing wrong costs you a year. From there it runs through housing, feed, handling, health and the harvest itself: gathering eggs, collecting milk, making your own cheese, producing grass-fed meat, and the butchering diagrams that most homesteading books leave out.

A 360 page Storey trade paperback in the Backyard Homestead series. Buy it before the animals arrive, not after.