Feeding the Farmstead Dog – a Can of Worms
Scavenging for kiwi.
When I blogged the other day about getting the most out of our meat chickens, I figured I would hear about feeding the spoils to the dogs. Pet diets are about as controversial as drinking raw milk, A2 milk, grassfed cows, vegetarian fed hens, homeschooling, humans eating meat, and politics. Definitely not something you want to bring up at a party! Groan.
My approach, which may surprise you, is that my dogs are dogs. Don’t get me wrong, I love my dogs and I have had dogs my entire life. But if I get tired of them in the house, I put them out, if I get tired of them outside, I put them in. I leave them home when I go to town, they sleep outside if they want to, and they sleep inside if they want to. And pretty much they eat a lot things they want to, just like the coyotes that live here too.
I don’t buy anything special food-wise for them. I have acquaintances who will not eat anything with a nose, another couple I know will not eat anything that grows underground, and other people I know buy expensive natural meat for the hens…I’m not kidding. These self-imposed rules for eating are then anthropomorphized onto their pets. Our local newspaper had an article yesterday about what to buy for Christmas gifts for dogs, the only thing my dogs know about Christmas is that the tree looks like a handy place to hike their legs and leave a message. Speaking of projecting, I am the one who bought a dog bone tree ornament… they don’t even notice.
The period of time we are living in is but a short blip on the screen of dog keeping. It used to be that farm dogs (and hens) existed on the what they could scavenge around the farmstead. Remember the dog in Farmer Boy? Almanzo’s mom and dad did not want to keep the dog around, although the story ended well, they did not keep a dog. I find it interesting that the classified ads in The Oregonian has shrunk considerably in all categories but there are more dogs for sale than there are job openings! Really!
The world is a hard place to navigate if you’re a farm dog. You can get run over by a vehicle. You can fall out of a car. You can eat a bone and puncture your guts. You can eat raw meat and die from a bacterial infection. You can get gored by a cow. You can step in a trap and lose your leg. A coyote can rip your throat out. A bear or cougar can take a swipe at you. You could go over to the neighbor’s and kill his chickens and the neighbor could kill you. The list could go on and on. Hazards exist everywhere for dogs, besides in the dinner bowl.
My dogs eat the following by chance, by design, and in no particular order:
Meat. Raised here on our farm. It may be beef, chicken, turkey, pork, squirrel, packrat, or bird. It may be cooked, it may be raw.
Eggs. If it comes from my hand, sunny-side up, if they find one, it’s shell and all.
Milk. When available.
Vegetables. Cabbage, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, rutabaga, carrots, corn, peas, celeriac, squash, parsnips, peppers, tomatoes, beans, beets, & bok choy. It may be cooked, wildcrafted (by them,) fermented, or it may be what falls on the floor during meal prep.
Fruit. Apples, pears, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, kiwi, grapes, cherries, blueberries, prunes, peaches and nectarines. It may be on the kitchen floor or the orchard floor. Inside they get what they get, outside they eat at will.
Bones. Beef knuckle bones, cooked to soft stage chicken bones, deer and elk bones that hunters so conveniently leave in the woods for my dogs to find.
Crap. Horse, chicken and calf.
Feed. Chicken, horse, cow and cat.
Commercial dog food.
Table scraps. Anything leftover…wonky broth, the last little bit of stew, questionable stuff in the fridge.
My dogs are healthy(IMO), with shiny coats, no skin disorders or critters. This may not be a text-book diet for dogs, but I have a feeling it is how dogs survived before the industrial age and commercial pet food came into fashion. I admit it is easier to raise dogs this way from puppyhood; however, it might be risky with a rescue dog who already has digestive disorders from years of eating commercial dog food.
I have to take a middle of the road approach. It’s not cost prohibitive but I pretty much know what my dogs are eating, and it’s also how we approach our own diet. Everything in moderation.
This is what we do, and by no means is this a prescription on how to feed dogs. How do you feed your dogs?
Food Renegade
Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op
Your dogs are beautiful and seem to love the outdoor life:)
We feed our dogs a commercial dog food, a middle of the road one as far as price. They also eat crap from chickens and sometimes our table scraps. They are also terrible about eating our cats commercial food of the same middle of the road brand. They are happy and healthy, too.
You know that dogs love cat food, because cat food has more meat and fat in it! Cat digestive systems are almost purely carnivore, whereas dogs are, like us, omnivores. Years ago, when I lived at home, the dog was fed cat food, that way we bough one bag (and had several cats and 1 dog). He loved it, and his coat was so shiny! Probably wasn’t the best for his body, though.
You know those bits that fall on the floor in the kitchen that then get scavenged? We call those “floor d’oeurvres”. Like hors d’oeuvres, only slightly less classy.
Haha, totally stealing that jenj.
We just usually do a fake supermarket-style clean up announcement and the furry hoover arrives to do her work (“paging Lily-dog to the kitchen, clean up required in the kitchen”).
Just about her favourite thing to eat, and certainly her favourite thing to clean up, is raw egg. I’m sure she deliberately tries to trip me up on the way back from the coop, just so she has to “earn her keep”
I’m sure our dogs are staring at me thinking “drop it, drop it, drop it” because they know they get to clean up any kitchen messes!
ok…i will join the ranks of the ridiculous people who anthropomorphize. heck, i might lead the entire group. each day i cook teddy a steak, a piece of poultry, sometime liver and some fish. she is one spoiled dog!
Its crazy to think about, but when the older generation is asked, the answer is, “the dogs ate whatever was leftover from the humans mealtime. There was no dogfood aisle at the store. The veterinarian was for livestock, not dogs and cats. They the domestic pet got sick, it either died or got better. If it died, there were hundreds more to take it place
For the most part this is the stance we take on our pets. We love them, but we are not going to take out a pricey loan to keep them alive. Survival of the fittest. I agree with the way you feed your dogs. It sounds the same as what we do.
love it!!! I think your dogs look very healthy and I would imagine that they are very healthy! ( probably the various forms of “crap” they have access to.) :>)
I’m always amazed at your dogs’ omnivory. Ours turns his nose up at many of the things your dogs got out of the way to steal. Great post.
We learned the hard way what not to feed animals. Our dog will eat anything including vegetables, fruit and grapes and leftovers as well. One of our cats has kidney disease from old age/wrong diet. I am going to start cooking all of their food from scratch. Then I will know what they are eating.
This was a great post. Love your dogs.
Good one. Once again, we’re thinking about the same things. I agree that the world is full of dangers for dogs and children. It’s a delicate balance between being a responsible parent and preventing them from living their own lives.
It blows my mind how many people thing somehow it’s not “proper” to feed pets scraps and the same ingredients people eat. Obviously they’re reading the marketing and not about the ingredients because if they knew what they were feeding their beloved four legged children they’d be stunned.
Your dogs sound pretty lucky to me…
Vet tech here.
There were a couple of things on your list that made me flinch, and which I’m fanatical about not permitting my animals to obtain. I’ve personally witnessed disastrous results with clients whose pets consumed the following:
Food cooked for humans with a lot of onions in it. There is a chemical in onions which prevents dogs from effectively carrying oxygen in the bloodstream; it causes a sort of chemical suffocation. Horrible. The blood turns brown and smells like sulfur. It can be treated if caught early, but is not cheap. One whole onion, even fully cooked, is enough to do in a large dog.
Citation: http://veterinarymedicine.dvm360.com/vetmed/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=174478
Spoiled or moldy food. Some molds can produce really nasty mycotoxins that cause seizures in dogs which are nearly untreatable with common drugs; we’ve managed them by effectively putting the dog under anesthesia for 12-24 hours coupled with high rates of IV fluids to flush out the toxins, but again, this is not cheap and does not always successful.
Citation: http://www.petmd.com/dog/conditions/neurological/c_dg_fungi_poisoning
The other thing I avoid due to anecdotal evidence is grapes/raisins; it’s not well documented at this time but a number of vets have reported acute kidney failure in dogs who consumed unspecified quantities. It’s not known how much or how often, but since damaged kidneys can’t be healed, only managed, I’m pretty serious about not taking that risk with my pets.
YMMV.
JessF, all good points, on my original post I cautioned about onions, and I don’t give my dogs anything with onions in them. As for grapes, I haven’t seen any problems, but that doesn’t mean that my dogs eat them very often, since they are such a fleeting crop here anyway and they run more of a risk fighting the coyotes and coons that are eating them too, than getting sick from grapes. And lastly I guess when I say I might give my dogs some weird broth, it’s probably been in the fridge for a 5 days and may have a hint of an off smell, but definitely not moldy or really spoiled. As for the chickens they bury and dig up two weeks later ala Juliette D’ Barclai Levy, they’re on their own.
Thanks for weighing in, as I said this is post is not a prescription for pet feeding and I am willing to accept the consequences of my actions with my own dogs. It may not work for people.
I don’t feel too bad giving the dogs old food from the fridge when I see the state of the bones that they dig up….they must have really strong immune systems or something!
Our Aussie Mischief pretty much eats like your dogs. She especially loves fresh veggies from the garden. We have to laugh, one of her favorites is green beans. After she has a few we have seen her bury a bean or two. She also awaits any windfalls when I am cooking.
We so enjoy your blog. Learn a lot. A blessed Thanksgiving to you and your family.
Seriously, someone you know buys special meat for their hens? Hens don’t eat meat, well except for the occasional worm or bug they might be lucky enough to find! As far as red meat for dogs…it is way better to give it to them raw then cooked…no one cooked it for them in the wild and that’s what they were designed to eat anyway!
Yeah, it’s crazy what some people feed their pets, thinking they are spoiling them when in fact they are feeding them all the wrong stuff…hence all the health issues they have now…just like us humans! We are what we eat!
Chickens are naturally omnivores. In the ‘wild’ or at least when truly free ranging, a large part of their diet is insects, bugs, worms, spiders etc. There’s an amino acid (Methionine) that is not available on a purely vegetarian diet that they have to get from meat sources.
I feed our chooks (we don’t have dogs) cooked meat scraps all the time, including chicken scraps. Although I do feel a bit weird about the chicken scraps…. Occasionally as a special treat they’ll get a beakful of raw beef or kangaroo mince. They love it.
Buying special meat though? For hens? That’s bizarre. How many people in this world are starving?
Our hens will eat meat if they can get it. I wouldn’t have believed it until they uncovered a rodent nest one day. I’ve also seen them fighting over and devouring small garter snakes. If it’s smaller than they are they’re all over it. My friend’s hens would go after frogs. Ew, but true.
we love throwing bacon rind out to the hens and watching them chase each other around, trying to steal the price from the other hen, they get so excited!
We feed our dog (12 yr old kelpie/cattle cross) cooked food which consists of basically leftovers/offcuts, ie all vegetable trimmings, meat trimmings (including the fatty bits). I throw in any leftovers in the fridge, ie spag. bol, rice, curry etc. If there is not enough vege matter I just pick some of the older stuff from the garden. Since he has been on this diet our dog has lost weight, his energy level has increased, his arthritis is not as troublesome (as in we can see he gets up and down easier, runs faster etc). We often wonder exactly what is in the commercial food and would never go back to it. I cook a boiler full once or twice a week so it is no bother to have it on the stove as dinner cooks then leave it on for a while longer. Great post. Thank you.
I can’t believe your dogs eat veggies! Mine have even gone so far as to lick broth off peas and leave them in the dish!
Like you, we feed our dogs pretty much everything, and since I didn’t know about onions, they’ve been getting a few of those, cooked but not raw. Chickens or pigs get the raw ones. We go easy on the raw milk, since otherwise it gives the dogs diarrhea. I would take exception to the “hens don’t eat meat” comment from Chris, because my hens will eat meat in preference to almost anything but fresh green grass. When they see me coming with chicken balls (ground meat scraps and fat) they go bonkers! I use meat scraps to bolster their protein intake.
I was going to say some dogs don’t tolerate milk as well as others, a situation which results in what my son termed an “ass-plosion”.
Hey Matron, Yeah it’s me, enjoying your amazing and intresting words of wisdom. Since Roscoe (mini-daschund) is a breed with known stomach issues, he needs some monitoring. I do know when he was a new pup I fed him nutro-max ( a high-end less costly) brand of dog food it caused him issues and vomitted quite often. I do feed him the core end of lettuce and knows when Iam fixing a salad (not sure how he knows) and usually waits with baited breath and won’t leave my feet until i give up the goods! He loves fruit, all kinds especially bananas, vegetables and what ever I toss his way. I have switched to a new food I purchase in Fairview @ Exclusive Pet food @ 21829 NE Halsey St. called Fromm Family made in the US by Fromm Family Foods. A little plugg for Kathy over at Exclusive.
Our dogs eat raw, which is mostly purchased, other than eggs. They would also get table scraps, but those are few and far between, because not much from a meal gets wasted around here. They get the floor d’oeuvres, veggie scraps, fruit scraps, whatever fruit and vegetables they can scrounge outside (loads of salmonberries and blackberries in season). Right now they are scarfing down the horse manure, probably because our very old horse is getting lots of horse pellets.
Basically if it’s remotely edible (to a dog that is) and they have access to it, they’ll eat it. All that variety seems to have given them pretty hardy digestive systems, so upset stomachs are a rare thing around here. Only one dog was on the farm as a pup, the other two came as young adults, but they’ve all adjusted well to that varied diet. I was feeding a decent dog kibble (no wheat or corn) before I switched to raw a couple of years ago.
I love to hear for others who also believe pets are pets. I spent hideous sums on one cat once because my husband had died just a few months ago and my young son could not face the thought of our cat dying too (he eventually had to be euthanized which I still feel bad about). As far as diet for our dogs, since we live in town and the dogs must be confined they get a middle grade kibble, table scraps, vegetables whenever they can get them as leftovers or from the garden. They get the occasional chicken bones cooked soft from when I make stock. Bunny manure is apparently a rare delicacy which must be gulped down while guarding it from the other dog. If we lived out in the country they would be able to forage a bit more.
Ooops, on the chickens don’t eat meat comment…who knew but I guess the bottom line here is, as Mel mentioned…isn’t it ridiculous that we worry so much about what our dogs eat and probably spend millions of dollars a yr. on them in this country…not to mention all the silly clothes that we put them in when….how many children are starving in the world today??
So glad to see your dogs eat crap too!! Nothing more um…lovely..than having a big ole lick from one of our pooches that smells of digested hay.
As far as their other diet, heck I am lucky to be able to feed the kids all the wonderful healthy stuff most of the time. The pooches get to lick their plates when the children are done…and if they are still hungry after that, they can snack on their commercial dog food. Which brand? The one that had a coupon in the Sunday paper of course. 
But yes…I do LOVE my dogs! That is why I let them lick me with such fouling breath…LOL
When we can up a year’s worth of salmon, all the meaty spines, tails, heads and other miscellaneous scraps go into big quart jars for dog food. It looks heinous, but they go crazy for it!
If I get an especially muddy egg from the henhouse I just give it to them whole — shell and all — on my way back to the kitchen.
They are currently in heaven as we butchered a deer yesterday and they got all the scraps, including the big leg bones as a special treat.
About grapes: We got our little guy the summer we moved into this house, and there was a huge grapevine climbing 50? 100? feet up into a stand of cedar trees. He scarfed at least his weight in fallen grapes — seeds and all — before we found out they are supposed to be bad for dogs… Thankfully, he didn’t even get a little bit sick. Just decorated the yard with grape-skin-and-seed poos for a few weeks.
Your post about the dog pulling carrots and taking them over to the grass to enjoy them got big laughs here at my house. Adorable!
I totally agree with you. my dogs have always eatend whatever is left over plus some commercial dry dog food. Not the expensive one just the cheap one. Our dogs have always been healthy with minimal visits to vets. Our last dog lived till almost 16 years old and the only thing wrong with him was the arthrities he had the last 18 months. people are always telling me I shouldnt feed them that or i should get the more expensive dog food but the are healthy and happy dogs.
I feed my dogs a commercial food. Just dry, and all the water they want. My rescue dog on the other hand takes all he wants from the garbage. (by garbage, I mean the composting bin of garbage.) If I am foolish enough to leave something foodwise on the counter longer than a split second without supervision, he gets it and is off faster than a speeding bullet to eat his treasure. I think his previous “caregivers” just threw all their leftovers out the kitchen window tho him in the backyard and that is what he is most comfortable with.
When I first saw our puppy eating berries outside on her own I was sure she was on the right track, for us anyway. If I followed all the (often conflicting) rules on what bones to feed and what not, what foods to allow and what not, there either wouldn’t be much around the farm for the dog to eat and she’d starve, or she’d be by far the costliest and the least productive animal to maintain. With just one dog, I haven’t had to buy kibble or any food with the dog in mind. One thing I do differently than some dog owners is that I allow her to have different foods around both indoors and outside to choose from instead of putting down a bowl of what I’ve mixed for a few minutes take it or leave it style. Almost always she gets around to eating whatever it is, even if she’s not too keen about it at first, but these are not cooked foods that I think spoil differently.
The floor d’oeurvres comment above was pure gold
The dry dog food diet is a risky one… especially if your dog eats fast then drinks water. The food expands in their stomach and increases risk of bloating. I’d take my chances with the garbage…
Same.Exact.Way.
Love, love, LOVE this post. This morning as I tossed some greek yogurt on top of my farm puppy’s industrial puppy chow (that the shelter fed her), my husband was surprised she’d like it. She licked the bowl clean (she’s a “bad” eater, so that’s rare), and he sort of tilted his head and said, you know…there’s probably higher quality protein in that yogurt than in the kibble.
She’s now addicted to sweet potatoes, broccoli, carrots, apple and pumpkin. We give them to her whole from our CSA, and she plays with them more ferociously than with her store bought toys. Same goes for treats hidden in boxes and climbing on trees as a preference over pretty much anything. Soon we’ll be raising meat chickens and rabbit, and filling our freezer with venison…you’d better believe she’ll be getting those scraps over a big bag of kibble from the store with who-knows-what in it.
She’s also discovered chicken poop and sheep poop are delicious.
I think her new life as a country dog in the mountains of Southwest VA is pretty much as good as a dog can have it. Even with the dangers…it’s far better than any coddled pet I saw when living in the city. In the old days, pre-farm and pre-puppy, we fed our indoor cats premium, super expensive wet food made from free range chickens.
When I was thinking about ordering the same for her, from habit, I realized how much my life and perspective has changed. She’ll probably always get some snippets of dog food…but I doubt it’ll be the major part of her diet.
And I doubt she’d have it any other way. Sorry for the long comment, but your post so ran true for me!
I enjoyed this post and all the comments. Our dog’s name is Sonny but I call him “Sonny The Pig Dog” because he will eat ANYTHING. He loves cat poop and will also sit patiently in an out of the way spot in the kitchen watching for floor d’ouevres whenever I cook or bake. We’ve had him for at least ten years and he has always eaten plate scraps and semi-wonky leftovers. If something’s really spoiled I put it in the compost, which is built to keep him, and the neighbors’ dogs. Those neighbors’ dogs even eat the suet cakes I put out for the birds in winter. I cook with lots of onions and he has never had any problems with consuming onions. We had a farm dog when I was a kid and he ate food with onions in it with no problems. Could it have to do with the breed? Or, if they start eating food with onions in it early on, could it condition them to tolerate it? That’s a mystery. I make chicken bone & scrap broth in my pressure cooker and the bones are so soft after that they can be crushed with the fingers. He gets those and any skin that has survived the pressuring. I do feed commercial dog food and he guards that from the cat whenever he sees her near it. Sometimes he eats it so fast he throws it up and then if I don;t notice it’s there he’ll go back later and clean it up. Ewwww. He used to love popcorn but not so much now. I’ve not seen him eat fresh fruit or veggies but he does love them when cooked. And he will practically try to sit on your lap if you have a piece of bread with peanut butter on it!
….that sentence should read, “meant to keep him, and the neighbors’ dogs, OUT.”
Excellent post! My two eat a commercial dry kibble, but a large portion of their diet is raw meat (usually chicken), raw eggs, a bit of leftovers, and whatever they hunt and catch – snakes, squirrels, rabbits, mice. They also like to get into the compost too, ugh! The only thing I make “special” for them is doggie ice cream during the hot months, made from yogurt and peanut butter. They are both healthy and happy.
Our pups get kibble as the main part of their diet. That is supplemented with eggs, fruit, and meat scraps (if they aren’t heavily seasoned). My male LOVES rabbit, goat, and chicken poop. Funny thing is, if his ball falls within 4′ of dog poop, he won’t touch it, and of he steps in dog poop, he’s crippled (as in holds that leg off the ground and runs 3 legged).
GREAT POST!! Loved the part about ‘crap’ LOL! Ours eat pretty much mostly commercial dog food but I do give them freezer burned meat that I’ll cook up for them or little bits of left overs here and there. Our Akbash supplements his diet with fresh rabbit or pheasant etc that he catches around the farm. So far so good…they all seem to be happy and healthy. I hope you and your family have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!
Maura
I have 2 older dogs which I love however…they are dogs and we treat them like dogs. We live on a couple of acres so they eat any game they (or the cats) catch. I give them a middle of the road kibble and minimal table scraps. One dog loves, loves, loves tomatoes and will dig his way into the garden to pick them. He also loves blueberries so we’ve had to fence off the bushes to keep him out .When I peel potatoes the tomato loving dog will eat those too. They both eat the windfall apples, cherries, pears they find.
One of our dogs loves tomatoes too. For quite a while I was puzzled why the cherry tomato plant only produced fruit on one side, which it turned out was the side the dog couldn’t reach! Yes, she was carefully plucking then off and eating them while she was supposed to be going potty.
We butcher a cow for ours dogs. One that can’t be sold or even one that is fresh dead of something (usually cast). I cut it in chunks, put it in garbage bags and freeze it…….they get it raw. It’s a lot of work but its free and they do well on it……other than the power it takes to run the freezer
We don’t have animals right now besides a dog and 2 cats, but our dog gets his fill of table scraps, meat scraps (hunting and trimming meat), floor derves, grass, plants in the garden, fruit, and cat poop. If after that he is still hungry then there is some dog food for him.
Sounds like your dogs are doing just fine…and jeez look at what they’re eating! It’s more healthy and diverse than what most PEOPLE eat.
Recently, we became very cash poor but had lots of food stocked up; we couldn’t afford to spend $$$ on the pets so something had to be done.
I started making the dog’s food out of rice, eggs and whatever I could come up with. Miracle of miracles, my skimpy eater started diving into her food and the skin issues we were battling cleared 99%! I’ll never go back to store bought. I make this every 5-6 days.
This is the basic recipe:
1/2 lb. pork fat, cut in cubes
5 cups white long grain rice
10 cups homemade broth/water combo (depends on what’s available)
6-8 home-grown eggs
In very large pot, saute the fat until it starts giving up some oil. Add rice, stir through fat to coat. Add broth/water combo and bring to a boil. Cover and reduce to lowest temp. and cook for 20 minutes. When rice is cooked, use a wooden spoon to make as many holes in the rice mixture as eggs you are going to use. Crack egg into each hole and cover for additional 10 minutes while still on hot but turned off burner. Stir in whatever else you want to add and store in the fridge between servings.
This food can be used, as is, but really needs some additional protein and vegetables.
For instance, we had some yucky tasting beef veg soup – I just dumped it in as part of the broth mix. When I make chicken or turkey broth, all those scraps and bits get mushed by hand and mixed in after the rice is cooked. I have also cleaned out all the left-overs in the fridge and added them along with the broth. Any beef trimmings get cooked along with the fat. If coconut oil weren’t so expensive, I’d use that for part of the fats. I just avoid potatoes and excessive onions (usually just table scraps have either of those and my 5 men don’t leave much behind from meals).
ALL our pets are named after food, in case we have to eat them one day (- half sick joke/half truth)
Truffles- shar pei/lab mix dog [homemade food, scraps, chicken poo]
Butter – cat [quite the huntress catching live animals daily supplemented with dry cat food and ice cream bowls]
Earl Grey Tea – cat [begger extraordinaire and dry cat food]
Nutmeg – rosie boa snake [mice we barter from the neighbor]
Prickle E. Pear – bearded dragon [homegrown veggies and weeds, garter snakes, insects and other "treats" found on our acre]
25 Rhode Island hens and 1 rooster – no names – [old bread @ $7 for about 35 loaves, raw veggie trimmings from grocery, layer pellets]
We’ve never owned a dog (only a couple of moggie cats) but yours look so healthy and happy. Their ‘bits and pieces’ diet is backed up by roaming free in the fresh country air, eating the good and the crap. Looks like it is the perfect diet for them.
A friend of ours has an old dog (about 12 years old now) and they just make a stew of all their veggie peelings, left over meat off the bone and fridge scraps. Mush absolutely loves it and for an old dog, is still in great health and has a lovely shiney coat.
Cheers – Joolz
Mostly you hear: “Oh no, don’t give them table scraps, only feed them dogfood.” Well, I think that is just crap. Anything from the table has to be better. Then, I read an article by one doctor who said if dogs were fed their natural wild diet, they would live at least two times longer than what we call normal life span. I leave a little dog food out, but Du dog mostly avoids it, holding out for the good stuff. He gets raw and cooked meat and the fats, the fruits and veggies he likes, brown rice, small amounts of dairy, whatever he steals from the compost pile, peanut butter, maybe a few other odds and ends. I do keep some store bought treats, but have you checked the labels – most are “Made in China” and China has a very poor history for safe dog food, among other things.
brenda from arkansas
Thanks! I loved reading what everyone is feeding their dogs and cats, or letting them eat actually. Jen, the floor d’oerves is priceless
A funny story about table scraps during my high school years…some back story first. One of the local Guernsey dairymen and his wife were very active in the Grange, he the Master, and she was Pomona, (or maybe Ceres or Flora, I can’t exactly recall.) This was at the time I was doing my degree work, and was at the grange a lot, and involved with W.A.C. (Women’s Activities Committee, and yes, I was that home ecy and nerdy in high school.) They had traditional roles in their marriage, hailing from midwest farms before settling in the Pacific Northwest. Kenneth and Gladys were childless, which I always thought was a shame or maybe a blessing when I was a kid, because she made the best cookies I had ever eaten except for the ones I had eaten at the other Guernsey dairies in our area. As a kid I pondered whether it was the cows, or cooks that made the cookies so good. My mom’s cookies were good but never perfectly shaped. I now know, it had to do with the fact that my mom worked full-time in town, and these women worked at their farms, baking cookies all the time. Cookies at our house were a haphazard affair if we were lucky enough to get them.
Anyway, Gladys was going to leave the farm one day and because it was her job to cook, she left strict instructions for Kenneth to feed the cats, and himself, and he would find everything ready in the kitchen in the proper places. She didn’t drive, so she was going to her meeting with someone else from our town. Out the door she went knowing things were handled at home lunch wise. She had prepared a lunch for Kenneth and left it in the fridge, and she had scraped the breakfast pans of table scraps for the cats. When Gladys came home she noticed the dish she had left for the cats was in the sink. As she started preparing supper, she reached in the fridge to get ingredients and noticed that Kenneth’s lunch was still sitting there…hmmm. Kenneth was at the barn, but when he came in for supper, she asked, “What did you eat for lunch, because I see your lunch is still in the fridge?”
“Fridge! I thought the plate on the counter was my lunch! It was good though, whatever it was.”
We feed our pack of dogs a pretty meat-heavy diet, mostly scraps from butchery. Yesterday was a few turkey heads each, which they enjoyed and came back and begged for more, but I stopped given it to them when I found them taking them off to bury them. Maybe for later, or maybe just dog competition.
We occasionally have a mishap where an animal has to be put down. We’ll break it down into 1lb or so chunks and freeze those, and they become the dogs ration for the day; if I have time I’ll grind a bit of the fat and lean with some organ meat; liver, kidney, heart.
All of the animals are raised on my farm, and I have good end-to-end control of the process.
We supplement this with a good quality dog food, but have noticed over time that the bowl of kibble remains untouched. Given the choice, the dogs prefer the raw meat.
When I was looking for a mate for my dog I went to a local breeder and asked Nancy about her dogs, and the litter she had. She asked me quite a few questions about my house and farm and so on (fenced yard? dog inside the house? ) and then finally asked what I’d be feeding them.
I explained that I ran a farm, and that I had a ready supply of fresh, raw meat,and that I’d probably be feeding that to the dogs. She was horrified, and on that basis decided not to sell me a puppy.
7 months later she lost 3 dogs to tainted dog food. The chinese grain source had added stuff to make the grain test higher protein, and it was fatal to dogs.
dog food taint link:
http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/RecallsWithdrawals/ucm129575.htm
I’ve been considering marketing my cull sows as frozen ground meat for pets.
Bruce, excellent idea. When we had more laying hens, our dogs had lots of raw chicken to eat. As you say, they really do prefer raw meat.
This is exactly how my dogs eat.
Hey Nita! LOVE this post! We don’t have farm goodies available here in our suburban-ish place, but we feed Kaleb a minimal amount of a Senior dog kibble and supplement it with small bits of whatever’s going on in the kitchen that day…and he loves raw things for the most part, especially trimmings from fruit…papaya’s his fave. He EXPECTS the end nub of any banana we peel to eat for ourselves and will snack on a stray raw green bean or celery piece…will eat almost any cooked food, but we really don’t cook for him. He IS spoiled, though, because on the rare occasion we go out to get a steak or some Mexican food, we cut up small and save the trimmed fat and tougher pieces and take them home to him in a doggie bag. NO dairy, though. He’s inside most of the time, and I have an intense aversion to cleaning up dog diarrhea
He sends greetings to T and M, and Jack and I send them to you…it’s long weeks between blogs readings these days but it’s ALWAYS good to finally get to stop in here and see how you are!!!!
Robbyn/thebackforty