Listed below are books on a variety of topics related to sheep, shepherding, farming, and food.
For more useful sheep info and resources, check out these BBSAI pages:
Articles
How-To Videos & Webinars
Websites and Pages for Shepherds
Scientific Articles and Books
Disclaimer: Broken links to third-party websites occasionally occur on this list, and they are addressed through regular page updates. Links referenced inside books are the responsibility of their respective publishers.
Books by Subject
Farm Setup and Sheep Management
- A Conservation Breeding Handbook Explains the importance of livestock and poultry breeds and describes how individual breeders can be stewards of these genetic resources.
- Beginning Shepherd’s Manual, 2nd Edition. Written by an experienced sheep producer, with chapters by a ruminant nutritionist and a veterinarian.
- Living With Sheep: Everything You Need to Know to Raise Your Own Flock. This guide contains a wealth of knowledge for raising and caring for a flock of sheep, providing both practical wisdom and anecdotes.
- Small-Scale Sheep-Keeping. This book’s author seeks to encourage, advise, and even entertain the new small-scale sheep keeper by setting out the principles of good husbandry based on sound, practical experience.
- The Sheep Book. A comprehensive guide to raising sheep. Author Ron Parker has generously put his book online as a PDF file.
- The Sheep Raiser’s Manual. Information on grazing management, pasture renovation, parasites, housing, fencing, selection, breeding, newborn lambs, lambs on grass, lamb grading, genetic improvement, controlled reproduction, record keeping, and more.
- Storey’s Guide to Raising Sheep, 5th Edition: Breeding, Care, Facilities. Detailed instructions and graphics lead readers through every essential procedure, including things like breeding and lambing, building a lambing shed, butchering, and marketing.
Sheep Health
- The Veterinary Book for Sheep Farmers. This book explains in simple words and drawings how to prevent, recognize, and treat many common sicknesses in sheep, goats, and other livestock animals.
- The Merck Veterinary Manual, 11th Edition. Not limited to sheep, but this reference book has information on a vast number of diseases, including causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and sometimes a prognosis.
- Managing Your Ewe and Her Newborn Lambs (by Laura Lawson). This book has helpful, hands-on information on things like rotating a poorly presented lamb in the uterus; bottle feeding a lamb; and getting a ewe to a lamb she has rejected. It is out of print but worthwhile if you can find it used at a reasonable price.
- Lamb Problems: Detecting, Diagnosing, Treating (by Laura Lawson). A good reference book to have on hand for lambing and lambs. It is out of print but worthwhile if you can find it used at a reasonable price.
Farming and Food
- The Contrary Farmer. This book gives readers the tools and information they need to grow their own food in a sustainable and Earth-friendly fashion, and it also tells some great stories.
- The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Bringing wide attention to the little-known but vitally important dimensions of food and agriculture in America, Pollan launched a national conversation about what we eat and the profound consequences that even the simplest everyday food choices have on both ourselves and the natural world.
- The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable. Natural and organic cures and farming methods.
- Lamb Lover’s Cookbook: Recipes that make cooking lamb a fun and delicious adventure! More than 100 mouth-watering ethnic dishes, casseroles, soups and stews, BBQs, crock-pot and pressure cooker recipes, Weight-Watcher recipes, and recipes for every cut of lamb you can imagine.
Other
- Hair Sheep Of Western Africa And The Americas: A Genetic Resource For The Tropics. Contains many scientific articles about Barbados Blackbelly sheep.
- Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (by Temple Grandin). Temple Grandin draws upon a long, distinguished career as an animal scientist and her own experiences with autism to deliver an extraordinary message about how animals act, think, and feel.