Storey's Guide to Raising Horses, 3rd Edition: Breeding, Care, Facilities

by Heather Smith Thomas

Now in full colour, the third edition of the best-selling Storey's Guide to Raising Horses features the most up-to-date information on every aspect of housing, pasturing, breeding, and health. Now with full-colour photography and illustrations throughout, the completely updated third edition of Storey's Guide to Raising Horses is the most comprehensive horse husbandry handbook available for first-time owners and experienced horse handlers. Covering everything they need to know about facilities, breeding, and health care, this new edition features a photographic gallery of many types of horses; expanded material on recognising, preventing, and treating a wide range of health issues, including insulin resistance, skin conditions, and digestive disorders; new vaccination protocols, including vaccinating for West Nile Virus; and updated information on breeding methods, foaling problems, and the care of broodmares and new foals. AUTHOR: Heather Smith Thomas has written extensively on animal health care, authoring thousands of articles and 24 books on the subject. Her books include Storey's Guide to Raising Beef Cattle, Essential Guide to Calving, Getting Started with Beef & Dairy Cattle, The Cattle Health Handbook, The Horse Conformation Handbook, Storey's Guide to Raising Horses, Storey's Guide to Training Horses, and Stable Smarts. She raises cattle and horses on her family ranch in Salmon, Idaho. SELLING POINTS: . Third edition of a best-selling reference, updated and in full color. Now features a full-colour photographic gallery of a wide range of horses, along with step-by-step photos and instructions for all the housing, breeding, and horse care essentials. . Includes new information on recognising, preventing, and treating a wide range of health issues, vaccination protocols, and caring for broodmares and new foals. . With more than five decades of experience in the field and many renowned books, Heather Smith Thomas is widely recognised as one of the foremost equestrian authors.

• ISBN13: 9781635860863
• Publish Date: 16 February 2021
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Storey Publishing LLC
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 448
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Posted to my blog on release day: Nonstop Reader.

Storey's Guide to Raising Horses is the third edition of the encyclopedic horse guide. Due out 2nd Feb 2021 from Storey, it's 448 pages and will be available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook formats.

The first edition of this book is one of the very first books (along with several other Storey's guides) I bought when we were still in the 'dreaming and planning' phase of our smallholding. It's still the first book I recommend to people who are interested in horses.

I think it's vitally important (especially when caring for or interacting with other living creatures) to do the very best we can to give them the highest quality life possible. This is a well written, understandable and accessible reference guide which covers pretty much everything to do with horses in a no-nonsense and scientifically sound manner.

A lot of the information may seem basic to people who have grown up with horses, but for people learning from scratch the information is well explained and built up logically in an understandable way. The first section covers all the basics: facilities, feeding, seasonal care, foot care, and handling.

The healthcare section expands on the basics and gives a very good, factual overview over keeping and maintaining healthy stock and covers everyday problems such as infectious and non-infectious disease, toxic plants, gut health (and what to do when your horse insists on being an idiot and eating something that isn't good for him), first aid, skin health and much much more.

The third section is much more advanced and will not have relevance for every reader - but it gives a good overview over what to expect and look for with breeding stock, selection, genetics, keeping a stallion, breeding, foaling, care of foals and young horses.

Like all the Storey's Guides it also includes a number of excellent appendices including a good basic anatomy guide, glossary, and cross referenced index.

With a brief comparison between this new 3rd edition and my 1st edition, I can say the new one is much more colorful and much better illustrated. There seems to be some new content as well. There's enough of an update that I'm seriously considering upgrading my copy of the 1st edition.

Five stars. Solid info for the smallholder or horse-keeper.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.