A Field Guide to Cows: How to Identify and Appreciate America's 52 Breeds

by John Pukite

Always informative, sometimes amazing, often amusing, A Field Guide to Cows features detailed descriptions of 52 cool cow breeds.
Each breed description includes a tasteful illustration, invaluable information on the cow's origin and history, and statistics on abundance and popularity. Learn about: the best milking cow, the smallest cow, the longest-horned cow, and many more cows.
Also includes: tips on cow watching, scores of cow facts, famous cows in history, and a genuine field-tested cow call.

Genres: Animals, Nonfiction, Agriculture, Science

141 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1996

About the author

John Pukite is the author of A Field Guide to Cows and Hiking Minnesota, for which he won a Minnesota Book Award.
He has served in the Peace Corps and worked in Alaska as a marine biologist.

Reviews

[Petra went to a party uninvited & ate cake]

I don't know anything about 52 varieties but I do know the free-range, organically-fed (meaning they roam people's gardens and eat what they please including magic mushrooms) local ones like to breed in my garden. They make a lot of noise at it too. And when they get old they get butchered by men with machetes and no idea of how to cut a fillet steak but still, its really great the cows lived how they pleased.

I'm watching Bizarre Foods-Jamaica right now. The guy is talking about how chicken and bull-foot soup with pieces of cow skin is a perfect marriage of collagen and fat and just delicious. I'd rather have the cows in the garden, screwing noisily, stoned on magic mushrooms than in a pot.

[Joanna]

While the information may be a tad outdated, everything about this book is entertaining and informative. It reads almost like the cows themselves wrote it. Even if you have only a passing interest in cows, I recommend it. The entries are short, but chock full of info, and they are far from dry. I can’t wait to buy a copy for myself. :)

[Mesembryanthemum]

This charming field guide is a brilliant example of how to present technical information clearly, consistently, and entertainingly. I keep it with my technical writing books to remind me that fun is important, too.

[Diane Manning]

Very cool. Living in Texas, we often drive by cows every day and don't think much about them. This book made me see this amazing animal in a whole new way. It's great for kids too!

[Lauren Austin]

Picked this up from a Little Free Library in Buena Vista, Colorado and read it on our road trip. Funny author, informative!

[Meaghan]

I had no idea there were so many kinds of cow, or that cows could be so interesting. The author provides short but detailed summaries of 52 breeds, including a physical description, a drawing of both cow and bull, a description of their usefulness and a history of the breed. Peppered throughout are some very funny cartoon illustrations as well as random cow trivia -- for instance, Brahman cows do not moo but grunt. I think 9-to-12s with an interest in animals would like this as well as adults; there's plenty to go around. I've added the author's A Field Guide to Pigs to my to-read list, in hopes that it will be as good as this one was.

[Roberta]

A Field Guide to Cows is very amusing but only has black & white sketches of the cows and bulls (if you don't know the difference, you need more help than this book can give you).

If you take identifying cows more seriously, Know Your Cows is a small handbook that will fit in your glove compartment and has good color photographs.

[Cathy]

This is a very fun book. I especially like the camouflage activity in the back ... no I haven't tried it, but it is an intriguing idea. This book, while humorous and campy does have some real "meat" (yes pun intended) in it. The brief descriptions are informative to those of us who like to look at cows but have no clue about any of the differences.

[Emily]

A must have for anyone traveling outside of cities!

[CFAITC]

Describes the 52 breeds of cattle in a format that assists in their identification.

[Elizabeth]

Bought this on vacation years ago for fun.

[Kat]

This book is great. Especially for kids. I have the 1996 copy.