Celebrate the amazing animals that live and work on our farms across the country. This special edition features expert insight from the Country Life archives, covering everything from hens to horses, and celebrating our traditional breeds of cows, pigs, sheep and more.
Welcome to COUNTRY LIFE FARM ANIMALS
Wait until the cows come home • How many of these native cattle breeds would you recognise from travelling through the British countryside or from the butcher’s shop? If we don’t eat them, we’ll lose them, warns Kate Green
Aberdeen Angus
Albion cattle
Gloucester cow
Guernsey
Hereford
Highland
Jersey
Longhorn cattle
Red Ruby Devon
Vaynol
Missing you pig time • Far from being lazy, dirty and sweaty, pigs are actually house proud, affectionate and fond of the odd game of hide and seek, John Lewis-Stempel assures us
The tale of the little pigs • Meet a Kunekune and you’ll be smitten, say owners. Kate Green talks to enthusiasts for the small pig that’s been winning hearts since its arrival from New Zealand a quarter-century ago
Keeping Kunekunes
Pigs for Christmas–and for life • Once, every rural family had a pig at the bottom of the garden in preparation for the festive feast. Julie Harding meets today’s keepers, but not all of them can bring themselves to eat their own animal
Pigs in clover
Gloucestershire Old Spot
Oxford Sandy and Black pig
Saddleback pig
Tamworth
Rock around the cluck • Assumed to be the lowest in the avian-intelligence pecking order, chickens are, in fact, more like feathered imitators of Sherlock Holmes, crows John Lewis-Stempel
Buff Orpington
Derbyshire Redcap
Marsh Daisy
The chicken and the eggs • Lockdown has made the idea of keeping hens–and harvesting their eggs–even more appealing, but the populations of a surprising number of delightful native breeds are dwindling. Kate Green canvasses expert opinion on rewarding poultry to consider
Duck-keepers have it quacked • Although the country has gone mad for chickens, many people view duck-keeping as a more complicated art. This needn’t be so, finds Kate Green, as owners reveal the fun (and eggs) to be had from this endlessly amusing fowl
What duck?
Egg-cellent information
Take it from the beak
Silver Appleyard
Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat • Geese are fun to keep, delicious to eat and good for the environment. They should be more popular, says Kate Green
Which breed?
What a gaggle
Let’s talk turkey • They’re easy to rear, they’re friendly and they needn’t only be for Christmas. Kate Green talks to turkey experts, who explain why we should be eating the heritage breeds
How to cook a native
Five reasons turkeys are cool
Weighty issues
Shaggy sheep stories • Britain’s extraordinarily diverse native sheep breeds lead the world, but if they’re to survive, we need to keep eating them, says Kate Green
Badger Face Welsh Mountain sheep
Bluefaced Leicester
Boreray
Exmoor Horn
Greyface Dartmoor
Herdwick sheep
Manx Loaghtan
North Ronaldsay
Wiltshire Horn
Bagot goat
English goat
Golden Guernsey goat
That’ll do, sheep • The original working trials may have stemmed from banter over whose border collie was better, but, as members of the International Sheep Dog Society tell Katy Birchall, the special relationship between man, dog and sheep continues to enthral
Setting a high baa: sheepdog facts
Straight from the horse’s mouth • Equus caballus has served us for millennia on the land, the battlefield and in the...
