I’ve written before about the potential dangers of essential oils when it comes to pets. Recently a flurry of posts has appeared online about beloved pet cats becoming critically ill when exposed to essential oils through home diffusers. These heartbreaking stories serve … Read More

Goat Milk as “Medicine” The healthful aspect of goat milk is as legendary as goats’ aroma and their preference for tin cans but with a more positive spin and a lot more basis in truth. A few savvy doctors do, in fact, prescribe goat milk … Read More

Alaska’s Denali National Park, which is more than 6 million acres in size, has always been home to sled dogs. On a trip to Alaska last summer, my husband and I visited the sled dogs owned by the National Park Service and, although I did … Read More

When I first got chickens, I was instantly drawn to them. I wanted to learn everything I could about my new, tiny balls of fluff. As I saw it, I was planning on having these chickens around for a long time, so connecting with them … Read More

I’ve been clicker-training horses for years. I understand the science. But revising a novel under the guidance of my editor Rebecca Davis, I understood for the first time how it feels to be trained using positive reinforcement. Here’s what it’s like to be edited by … Read More

Beer for goats? Yes, indeed! Beer, in fact, for many other farmyard creatures as well. Horses, sheep, goats, cows, and pigs all benefit from a good dark beer when they aren’t feeling up to snuff. We learned about beer for livestock 10 years ago when … Read More

Our first interactions with wild predators took place in 1976, when we moved to our small farm in Michigan and bought a box of chicks at the local feed store. We learned very quickly that we weren’t smarter than a raccoon. Confronted on several mornings … Read More

You don’t have to study today’s headlines for long to notice an uptick in the number of encounters between humans and animal predators. Over the past century, the range and populations of smaller predators such as coyotes, raccoons, and foxes have expanded throughout much of … Read More

Calving season starts early, up at our little homestead in the Adirondacks. Three of our Scottish Highlands — Solstice, Iona, and Fiona — gave birth this year, with the earliest calf arriving on March 19th. We called the first one Jubilee, a … Read More

Most humans combine varied degrees of verbal and visual ways of thinking. Animals, however, think only in pictures, sounds, smells, touches, and tastes. This becomes a problem when people interact with animals based on their own perceptions, rather than attempting to view the world the … Read More