Customer Reviews

Storey's Guide to Raising Dairy Goats: Breeds, Care, Dairying

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is probably one of the best books on the market, but having raised a few goats before with my mom, I found some serious gaps in the information here, especially regarding illness, post-partum does, and bummer kids.

For example, I recently bought a Nubian cross goat after many years without one, and she came with the surprise bonus of a day-old bummer kid. Unfortunately, never having had a bummer before, I was unsure how to feed her properly and bought this book. Within a few weeks she died due to bloat because of the bad and/or nonexistant advice of this book. I then bought the Storey book on sheep and found the information on bloat that could have saved her life if it had been in the goat book.

Additionally, the tone of Mr. Belanger's writing rubs me the wrong way, sounding somewhat condescending at times and cavalier at others. I was disturbed by some of the things he recommended, such as transporting an adult goat by sticking it in the trunk of a car (!!!), but his attitude is that those who disagree with him are either ignorant or they're whiners. I am neither, and I don't appreciate paying good money to be told I am because I disagree, thankyouverymuch.

In conclusion, this book does have its merits and is good for the basics, but it's not a complete source of information and I would get at least one other goat book as well as the Storey sheep book to fill out your library, especially if your large animal vet is very far away from your goats.

As previous publisher of a magazine for people wanting to return to nature I had read the original book many years ago. This edition is a vast improvement with some 80 pages of additional information and it has been updated to reflect current practices.

If you are considering raising dairy goats primarily for your family milk needs, or as a part-time supplemental income, this book is perfect for you.

If you want to expand later into making dairy goats your primary income, you will want to add Goat Husbandry. Goat Husbandry has two basic flaws - it is more highly technical and it is intended mostly for the UK.

Belanger's book would be more complete and would eliminate my need for Goat Husbandry if only the following two issues had been more thoroughly covered:

1 - Provide income projections for several classes of commercial dairy goat operations. Perhaps a chapter of 40 pages would be needed to do the topic justice, but if done properly, commercial dairy goats could become more accepted by the financial community and, therefore, could promote the practice.

2 - Provide a chapter showing, say, three dairies that meet the requirements of Grade A. Yes, it is a widely variable regulation even within a single state, but at least readers could gain a better understanding of the costs, design and implementation to achieve such status. Perhaps even interviews of the operators could be included in a manner similar to Gail Bowman's humorous phone chats with Annette Maze in Raising Meat Goats For Profit.

The two points above are not meant as criticism, for, as I stated, Belanger has done a great job with this book. I'm just wishing he could add the two points above so I could make room on my bookshelf by discarding Goat Husbandry. Further, although Goat Husbandry does provide some information on commercial dairying with goats, it itself is not especially thorough on the topic and, further, is so dedicated to costs and incomes in Britain that it is not very useful for North America.

Hmmm...perhaps there is yet room in the market for yet another goat book. Say, "Commercial Dairy Goats in Canada and The U.S.A." Get busy Jerry or I'll write it!

I am certainly pleased with Belanger's Raising Dairy Goats and will keep it on the same shelf as Goat Husbandry and Raising Meat Goats For Profit. With these three, my goat library is nearly complete.

Incidentally: Belanger formerly published Countryside & Small Stock Journal, perhaps the best ever magazine for small livestock farmers. It is now run, I think, by his kids and you can view it on the web.

I have gotten my hands on several books since I decided to raise goats, and this has by far been the most helpful. Belanger is objective, knowledgeable, and sensible. He covers every aspect of goat dairying - except what might be specific to your own geographic reason. But if he'd put in something like that it would have been a different type of book. He discusses all the many ways that you can do things - not just the one or two that he himself prefers. There are even many recipes in the back.

I really like this book. I have been involved with goats for the past two years, and have been lucky enough to keep my herd with a friend who has been "doing" goats for more than ten years. As I read through this book it covers all of the major topics that a novice needs to know about, and presents the information in an easy-to-read format.

The book covers the following topics: Basic Information About Goats; Milk; Getting Your Goat; Housing; Fencing; Feeding; Grooming; Health; The Buck; Breeding; Kidding; Raising Kids; Milking; Keeping Records; Chevon; Dairy Products; and Recipes for Goat Products. It has an thorough appendix, a good glossary, and an extensive index.

All in all I highly recommend this book for someone considering purchasing dairy goats, as well as those who already have goats and want a good reference book to which they can refer as needed. Don't hesitate, buy it!

Story's guides claim to introduce animal care in "harmony with nature". This book promotes more of a home version of factory farming. With suggestions like penning your animals up instead of allowing them to graze on pasture and one way of disposing of unwanted buck kids is to "drowned them in a bucket of water". I hardly see how this is in Story's "theme" of harmony with nature. JD Belanger's eliteist attitude is also very annoying. Also to contradict his rants, woven wire works fine, you can keep a buck with your does, its cheaper, easier, and BETTER to put your goats on pasture (if avaliable). And its OK to sell an undesireable goat to someone for a pet as opposed to destroying it as he suggests. I give it two stars only for recipies, short info about diseases, and because its about goats.

When it comes to small scale farming, accurate information is very important and Belanger exceeds not only in delivering a book that I consider the very best in my collection on dairy goats, but his writing style will have the beginner to the advance goat farmer well on their way in raising healthy dairy goats.

We were looking for information about goats. Milk is something we still buy from grocery stores and the possibility of making our own dairy products was interesting enough to look into. Not knowing anything about goats, we had to start somewhere.

I read the reviews below, and this looked like a good place to start. I can agree with much of what has been said by earlier reviewers, but still found this book to be worth the price and time to read. Yeah, it's not exhaustive - but I wasn't looking for the only reference on goats I'd ever need. It is directed towards dairy, rather than meat, and the information on handling milk and arranging work areas was useful. There was some discussion of the business aspects of dairy goats. A profitable business can require some hard decisions and callouse handling of livestock. These may not be some of the more pleasant aspects of raising livestock, but the author did not devote a tremendous amount of print to that aspect.

If you haven't raised goats and think there may be some possibilities, this is a good place to start.

We have a few dairy goats and are new to the goat game. This book is quite helpful in giving us much of the general information that we need and will need. It also has information about using goat milk and making cheese, which is a nice bonus to the general care information.

I have no experience raising goats per se, but it seems like there must be more to it, like some things have been left out. I have read this book and feel like I need more information. I think this book is easy to read and understand, but I found some of the author's tone to be of an alarmist's nature. I was left afraid that goats are very fragile and run a good risk of getting every disease in the book. That isn't very encouraging. I cannot really apply the advice given as I do not have goats yet, I am in the research stage, so I cannot make comments about it. Overall I am happy to have the book, but it isn't the only one I will buy.

When we decided to advance from making our own yogurt to making our own cheese, we quickly realized that we wouldn't be able to get the raw milk needed to make the best cheeses unless we could produce our own milk. Certainly that didn't mean keeping a cow, so we began to research goats-ownership. The first book we read was interesting but filled with "tips" that required some familiarity with keeping goats; we needed something more basic. By accident, our next book acquisition was Gail Damerow's YOUR GOAT, which it turned out was aimed at a youth audience. This was not a bad place for us to start because it provided really helpful definitions and pictures. Storey's Guide to RAISING DAIRY GOATS was the perfect second step. Now we are ready to start constructing housing & fencing as well as places for milking & storing feed; we understand ads in the Farmer's Market Bulletin; we have a feel for the real challenges (a dairy goat must be milked at the same time twice each day, every day of the 10-month-or-so milking cycle); and we have a feel for reasonable time frame for this undertaking. I can't imagine how we would have dealt with goat-ownership if we hadn't read this book first!