Green Tip #2
Organic home-grown home-made pet food.
Serving up any pet food picked up from the supermarket is a bit shameful - it's quick, easy, and made with whatever filth the manufacturers have lying around.
Choice magazine has whipped out a guide to making your own pet food, from Professor David Fraser of Sydney University. (I've read some guides on the 'net, but to be honest - the internet has people like me writing on it - and I just don't trust me, but that guy is a professor of some sort.) I'll reproduce it here with scant regard for their copyright, but I'm a member, and this information needed to be freed. Plus it's freely available here.
NOTE: Obviously, you're only likely to be able to grow the potatoes yourself. But, for dog food at least, I've read giving them vegetables (just not onions, garlic, and I assume, shallots) is good, but there are quite a few to be careful of. Do your own research, ask your vet, if you stray from this guide, make sure it's OK, and probably just supplement their diet with this - don't make a sudden switch.
MY TIP: Buy a GIANT pot, get serving-sized containers, and make about a weeks worth in one hit. I would freeze the meat, it's never wise to keep meat in the fridge for too long, or just stew some up every second day.)
Adult dogs:
Ingredients:
550 g boiled potato
350 g lean meat (lightly stewed)
80 g raw sheep or beef liver
20 g corn oil
20 g bone meal (Can be found in certain healthfood stores, excellent source of calcium)
5 g table salt
Mix all the ingredients together and feed it to your pet once a day.
Dog weight / Serving size
5 kg / 270 g
10 kg / 460 g
15kg / 620 g
20 kg / 770 g
25 kg / 900 g
30 kg / 1000 g
Adult cat
250 g boiled potato
600 g lean meat (lightly stewed)
100 g raw sheep or beef liver
20 g corn oil
25 g bone meal (Can be found in certain healthfood stores, excellent source of calcium)
5 g table salt
Mix all the ingredients together and feed it to your pet once a day.
Cat weight / Serving size:
2 kg / 100 g
2.5 kg / 120 g
3 kg / 140 g
4 kg / 190 g
4.5 kg / 210 g
5 kg / 240 g
For more information, check out the Choice article. Then Google as much as possible - and relish in the somewhat conflicting information and lack of official dietary advice.
Labels: Green Tips
posted by Larry Bonewend @ 10:42 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Interesting tidbit I learned this semester- the food that manufacturers are most careful about with regard to the nutrient balance is pet food. Why? Because many animals spend their whole life essentially eating the one thing, meaning that any deficiency in the food would soon be showing up in the form of malnourished and/or dying pets- not good PR!
And our cat wouldn't eat that... he is bizarrely fussy. Doesn't particularly like 'messy' wet foods unless a small morsel is presented on the palm of a human hand. He has a habit of asking for more and then preferring to walk away and leave the last piece untouched. I hope that when we get a dog (about the same time as we get a backyard, I suppose- a distant dream) it won't be so damn fussy. I've owned rabbits that were bigger carnivores than Feifei.
Excellent, I was hoping you'd know something about the nutritional side of it.
But, I think that manufacturers emphasis on nutrient balance, is more a reflection on the horrid shit we humans manage to sustain ourselves on. (And the good stuff, let's face it, doesn't have anything to do with manufacturing.)
My less food-obsessed Lab (he's a Staffy cross) wolfed his home-made food down - it's the only food he'll eat quickly. (Apart from that time I gave them steaks as a treat.)
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