Taking Stock

Roger Morgan-Grenville's interest in cattle began at the age of six, when highland cows tore through his grandmother's vegetable garden. Decades later, at 61 and with no farming background, he took a part-time job as a labourer on a beef cattle farm so he could present the animals' side of the story.

Cattle have shared human life for roughly ten thousand years. They have worked alongside us, supplied food and footwear, given us drink, and performed countless smaller services, yet most of us know very little about them. Many of us also overlook how far the conditions we impose on them have been stripped of natural behaviour.

Part history, part adventure and part forthright argument about how cattle should be kept in the modern era, the book asks readers to consider what ends up on their plates and how nature might be brought back into food production.