Carlotta Cooper - The Complete Beginners Guide to Raising Small Animals: Everything You Need to Know About Raising Cows, Sheep, Chickens, Ducks, Rabbits, and More

The Complete Beginners Guide to

Raising Small Animals

Everything You Need to Know About Raising Cows, Sheep, Chickens, Ducks, Rabbits, and More

By Carlotta Cooper

A few years back we lost our beloved pet dog Bear, who was not only our best and dearest friend but also the Vice President of Sunshine here at Atlantic Publishing. He did not receive a salary but worked tirelessly 24 hours a day to please his parents.

Bear was a rescue dog who turned around and showered myself, my wife, Sherri, his grandparents Jean, Bob, and Nancy, and every person and animal he met (well, maybe not rabbits) with friendship and love. He made a lot of people smile every day.

We wanted you to know a portion of the profits of this book will be donated in Bears memory to local animal shelters, parks, conservation organizations, and other individuals and nonprofit organizations in need of assistance.

Douglas and Sherri Brown

PS: We have since adopted two more rescue dogs: first Scout, and the following year, Ginger. They were both mixed golden retrievers who needed a home.

Want to help animals and the world? Here are a dozen easy suggestions you and your family can implement today:

• Adopt and rescue a pet from a local shelter.
• Support local and no-kill animal shelters.
• Plant a tree to honor someone you love.
• Be a developer put up some birdhouses.
• Buy live, potted Christmas trees and replant them.
• Make sure you spend time with your animals each day.
• Save natural resources by recycling and buying recycled products.
• Drink tap water, or filter your own water at home.
• Whenever possible, limit your use of or do not use pesticides.
• If you eat seafood, make sustainable choices.
• Support your local farmers market.
• Get outside. Visit a park, volunteer, walk your dog, or ride your bike.

Five years ago, Atlantic Publishing signed the Green Press Initiative. These guidelines promote environmentally friendly practices, such as using recycled stock and vegetable-based inks, avoiding waste, choosing energy-efficient resources, and promoting a no-pulping policy. We now use 100-percent recycled stock on all our books. The results: in one year, switching to post-consumer recycled stock saved 24 mature trees, 5,000 gallons of water, the equivalent of the total energy used for one home in a year, and the equivalent of the greenhouse gases from one car driven for a year.

Dedication & Acknowledgment

I would like to thank several people for their help while I worked on this book.

My thanks to James Weaver for his patience and kindness. Thanks to editors Amy Moczynski and Gretchen Pressley for all of their hard work and encouragement.

Thanks to the Greeneville/Greene County Public Library in Greeneville, Tennessee, and to their staff for their help. And, thanks once again to my friend Donna Fefee for allowing me to discuss livestock and agriculture with her, as well as for being a supportive friend.

Introduction

By most estimates, the concept of human civilization really begins when people transitioned from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to that of a more settled way of living in one place. This was made possible by the growth of crops and the domestication of many of the animals we still use on farms today. Early agriculture and the domestication of animals are dated to around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, part of the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. The agricultural way of life and the domestication of animals soon spread to Egypt and India. Agriculture and the domestication of animals are believed to have developed independently at similar times in parts of China, Africa, and places on the American continent. Early crops included wheat, barley, and rice in different places.

The first animal domesticated was probably the dog because it was useful as a hunting companion, a livestock guardian, and a protector, among other things, but other animals soon followed. With humans living in settlements, it became possible to keep herds of animals or contain them in pens. Humans were able to begin practicing selective breeding in order to develop animals that were most helpful to them. A wide range of animal traits was possible, depending on where people lived and what specialties they required. For instance, they could breed larger versions of cows so they would have more meat or breed sheep with more wool so they would have more fiber to spin and sell.