Beautiful Goats

Beforehand, I did not really know what to expect. But when I started reading, the book surprised me. I love goats, they're so cute and smart! This book has a lot of information about goats, more than you would expect.

The book has wonderful pictures of different breeds of goats and for every breed there's a description with it's features and distribution.

I especially love the Pygmy Goat! So adorable!

I want a pygmy goat soooooooo bad! So many adorable goats! This book puts a spotlight on some award-winning goat breeds from around the world, along with info about every particular goat’s role in the barnyard (whether for wool or dairy or meat or just cause they’re cute), their origins, and history. If you own goats, or just like them, then you’ll find much to enjoy here.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to look enviously at the herd of adorable little goats what live on the farm down the street.

Beautiful Goats is an introduction with a short history and a gallery in honor of the noble goat. Originally published in the UK in 2014 this re-format and re-release is due out 3rd March 2020 from Quarto on their Ivy Press imprint, it's 112 pages and will be available in paperback format.

There are over 300 different breeds of goat and they have been our constant companions for thousands of years. They give us milk and cheese and other dairy products, meat, skins, and fibres as well as being used to clear land and prepare rough terrain for agricultural use. They're hardy, mostly disease resistant, intelligent, charming, and funny. This book is a tribute to everything goat.

The authors have an accessible and informative (but not dry) style. The book has a good introduction with some history, uses, rare breeds, and a very short capsule intro to showing. The intros are followed by a gallery listing of 40 goats (some duplicate breeds, such as Saanen), with a full color detail photo, breed intro with features, uses, related breeds, size/weight, and range/origin. The picture content also helpfully includes the age and sex of the subject (including reproductive status/castration). The end of the book contains some sepia-tone photos from specific show entry winners, along with an index and solid links lists for further reading.

Honestly the completeness of the bibliography and links are probably worth the cost of the book by themselves. Very well done. This would be a very good choice for a 4H or FFA intro to selecting and showing goats or at least doing the necessary pre-purchase research. There is no animal husbandry content included here, this is a compendium of show quality healthy beautiful goats in show condition.

A useful and appealing book and a good introduction to the conformation and looks of standard purebred goats.

Four stars

This is a great book for anyone interesting in learning a bit about the various goat breeds. Each breed covered includes a photo and description. It was interesting learning how the different breeds came into being.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.
I love animals but had no idea there are so many different breeds of goats. The pictures are very good and I enjoyed reading about each of these breeds. The beginning of the book also has some interesting information about the various purposes of goats.

I love goats and when I received this book I was most excited to see the cute photos. I wasn't disappointed and was happily surprised that this book offered so much information about the different goat breeds.

A lovely book!!! The pictures are so beautiful and really bring the different animals to life, they pop of the pages!!!

Would be great for an AG class or 4H Club, detailed introduction for many goat breeds with excellent pictures.
I appreciate that each picture explains the age and sex of the "model" goat, makes the picture so much more useful.