Complete and Easy Guide to Beekeeping: A Fascinating Reference with Recipes

By: Kim Flottum

This book isn't just a guide to beekeeping or a honey cookbook - it's both. No other book on the market provides an in-depth review of beekeeping and explains what honey is good for you and how to use it.

Beautifully illustrated, Complete and Easy Guide to Beekeeping is perfect for the health conscious person who wants to sweeten up their life by saying no to processed sugars and yes to eating organic, healthy food. This book is the complete 'honey bee' resource with general information on bees; a how-to guide to the art of beekeeping and how to set up, care for and harvest your own hives. It also includes tons of fun facts and projects that are beerelated.

The second half of the book is the complete guide to honey. It reviews the different types of honey and their health effects and provides hundreds of ideas for using honey in recipes, cosmetically in facemasks and shampoos, and for medicinal uses.

 The Complete Book of Raising Livestock and Poultry

By: Katie Thear (Editor), Alistair Fraser (Editor)

Backyard farmers interested in having a readily available source of eggs and meat are provided with nontechnical information on housing, feeding, raising and butchering chickens.

How to dispach and prepare poultry for the table is covered which is useful as this is a taboo subject for most writers

 Choosing and Keeping Chickens

By: Chris Graham

Chris Graham has written a fantastic book here. It covers all you need to know to keep chickens, as do others, but where this really stands out is the section on what birds to get.

He describes about 50 different breeds, each with a colour picture and vital information for the prospective keeper such as their suitability for keeping at home, number and type of eggs laid, personality etc.  He also covers ex-battery hens, which I found cheering.

This book is excellent value for money - one to buy and keep handy on the shelf for reference.

 Choosing and Keeping Ducks and Geese

By: Liz Wright

I doubt there is much about keeping ducks and geese that Liz Wright doesn't know and her wonderful book covers every question the novice is likely to ask. She starts logically with what you actually need to keep ducks and moves through to care, problems and diseases, housing and so forth.

I wholehearted recommend this book for anyone thinking of keeping ducks or geese. It's brilliant

 Keeping Bees: A Complete Practical Guide

By: Paul Peacock

 If you've ever thought about keeping bees, this is a really good book to get you started

This excellent book will help you decide if beekeeping is for you and provides an invaluable reference for those problems that are bound to arise. It's well illustrated with quality full colour photographs and diagrams but it's not a 'coffee table' book.
Highly recommended.

 Poultry House Construction (Gold Cockerel S.)

By: Michael Roberts,

This is a do-it-yourself guide to building poultry houses and allied equipment. It discusses the needs of the various types of fowl, and gives detailed plans and material lists for building coops, nest boxes, runs, arks, folds, a show box and a "poultry palace".

It's not quite as clear cut or easy as yo may want but a good starting point for creating your own chicken coop.