Home Cooked Pet Food - Revised...It's Canning Season!!! :)

Oscar, Dana and Leo

Hi Everyone :)

I want to send out a BIG THANKS to everyone who contributed to my last post about home cooked pet food. It's a learning curve and I'm STILL learning. Some of your comments had me doing more research. I want to share more information that I learned over the last few days, such as:

- Taurine amino acid supplement for the cats

- New cat food recipe

- Information on struvite bladder crystals in dogs (our Marlene has them)

$11.99 at Amazon, should last a few months

Cats and Taurine

As I've mentioned, Taurine is an ESSENTIAL amino acid that cats need in their diet for proper functioning of their bodies. Among so many scary conditions, the scariest condition due to lack of Taurine is heart failure and blindness.

Taurine is found mostly in muscle meat and organ meat. Problem is, when it's cooked, it leaches out of the meat and into the cooking water. If that cooking water isn't used, there isn't enough Taurine in the meat left for the cats to benefit from.

I'd been slow-cooking their chicken and chicken livers...but a lot of the broth wasn't used specifically for their food. Taurine is water soluble so I am quite sure that most of that amino acid was just sucked out of the meat in the cooking and only minimal amounts were left over. This worries me.

There are debates on which way to cook the meat to keep the most amount of Taurine in it etc...I'm not going to get into that here, but suffice to say, by reading my "Sources" list at the bottom of this post, you can form your own opinion! If you feed your cat a raw organic food diet, the likelihood of needing added Taurine is low if unnecessary. I'm not going to take any chances with our furry felines, so I've decided on a Taurine supplement. I found a reputable one, and it's not very expensive at all, so it's better safe than sorry here in this house. (Thanks for the heads up Deborah Harvey!!) xx

New Cat Food Recipe

Picky Oscar the Cat decided he didn't like chicken anymore...grrrr...so out of desperation, I just mashed up some of the dog's pork for him and he ate that up like it was nobody's business! Pork is a good meat for the cats and they all love it, so I'm not going to bother with the chicken anymore for them. I'll still add some chicken liver but their main meat will be pork from now on. Also, I've cut out the veggies completely from their diet, and only give a minimal amount of brown rice to bind their food - being the true (obligate) carnivores that they are, they simply do not need veggies and starch.

But again, to be safe, I give them a vitamin/mineral supplement. They absolutely LOVE that Kelp Help Supplement I give them so we've had no issues at all with picky eaters. Thank goodness!

I've made life so much easier on myself too. Instead of meticulous preparation...I have a container of pork in the fridge and a container of cooked brown rice. Each meal (twice daily), I measure out 3/4 cup of pork, a small 1/4 cup of brown rice and blend that up with some water. I divide it by three and add a half 1/8 tsp of coconut oil, the egg shells, Kelp Help and Taurine. 

They gobble it up.

Easy Peasy!

Marlene, Charlie and Jack - There's Always Room On The Porch!

Dogs With Struvite Bladder Crystals

I mentioned in my last post that Marlene has bladder crystals. She was doing fine for the last few years on the prescription kibble. But since I started the home cooked diet, I've noticed she seems irritated and has to pee a lot more in small quantities. This troubled me, I was thinking that maybe she was getting another urinary tract infection...or worse, that the crystals were forming again.

She was prescribed the Royal Canine S/O Urinary formula for her crystal problem a few years ago. It "encourages water consumption due to high levels of sodium chloride" (from the Royal Canine site). I wasn't too thrilled about that, though she was drinking a lot of water, which is good to keep her urine at a more acidic PH (which is what I want). 

This week I learned something else from a great, reputable ENLIGHTENED vet out there, Dr. Judy Morgan. Firstly she said if your vet tells you that your dog needs to be on prescription kibble for life, get a new vet. These foods were designed to treat a problem short term because they are not nutritionally sound. This is what Dr. Morgan says:

"Royal Canine S/O is made with inferior ingredients (Brewers rice, corn, chicken fat, chicken meal, corn gluten meal, natural flavors, salt, egg product, wheat gluten, potassium chloride, vegetable oil, powdered cellulose, monocalcium phosphate, fish oil, calcium sulfate, DL-methionine…) The reason this diet dissolves struvite crystals lies in one ingredient: DL-methionine, which is a urinary acidifier. You can feed your dog a higher quality diet and add a tablet of DL-methionine to achieve the same results." (I've paraphrased a little, but the link is in my "Sources" section below)

Marlene With Her Treasures

A Rain Rant is imminent.....

If a dog like Marlene eats too many grains and high carb veggies, it makes her urine PH too concentrated (alkaline) and this leads to the formation of struvite crystals in her bladder - which in her case, leads to UTI's. The added chemical in the S/O formula (DL-methionine) counteracts the high grain count in the kibble - so basically Royal Canine gets away with selling a kibble that is only about 30% meat "meal"...stuffing it with grains and crap because the DL-methionine does its job. Does this sound GOOD or even responsible or nutritional to you my friends??? The more I learn, the more I cannot stand industries, especially the profit-making veterinary industries...and as I always say, I KNOW there are some very good vets out there, I've met a few in my lifetime...but let me tell you, times have changed...if you have a good vet, it's like a good mechanic...KEEP THEM IN YOUR LIFE...I'm so passionate about my pets and I really want the best for them. It disgusts me how some companies/vets take their health so flippantly...(end of rant)

The way to control crystal formation isn't with expensive non-food from Royal Canine...it's to put Marlene on a high protein and low-carbohydrate diet. This means that for Marlene, I am now feeding her 75% meat and 25% veggies that are low-carbohydrate. Of course, she still gets all of her supplements as well. The brown rice is SO high in carbs, I've cut that out completely.

Generally speaking, low-carb veggies are all veggies grown above ground...root veggies contain higher amounts of carbs. Carrot is a root veggie with a lower-ish carb count, so I'll be feeding Marlene a mix of carrots, green beans and peas. She can also eat lettuces, asparagus, broccoli, peppers...but for now I'll stick to the basics.

I read on another site that if your dog shows signs of urinary discomfort, you can put her back on the Royal Canine S/O for a month or so to help dissolve the crystals, then start the high protein diet from scratch. This should keep her safe from crystal formation in the long run.

I am going to monitor my troubled little husky gal and in a week's time if she doesn't improve, I will put her back on that kibble to help her; then in a month or so, ease her back to a high protein home cooked diet.

I also have PH strips to monitor her urine. Wish me luck with that! :)

Another thing...I've changed the way I feed the dogs too. Instead of preparing a mix of their food all in advance...I do the same as the cats. I have the meat, cooked rice and blended veggies in three containers in the fridge and I just measure it all out at each meal and add the supplements. It makes life SO much easier on me!

******************************* PART DEUX *******************************

IT'S CANNING SEASON!!!

I bought a pressure canner!!! Woo hoo!! An investment into my frugal future! :)

I used it for the first time during the weekend and canned 14 jars of beans. It was a little scary at first...you've likely heard the horror stories of pressure canners exploding and other such fables lol...Okay, I'm sure it's happened - but if you follow the instructions you'll be fine - I was! :)

I could easily go nuts on the canning right now...but I have to remember that there is a big move in my near future and I don't want to haul cans of food with me on the move...so I'm trying to only can what I will use for the winter months! 

Having said that, I also got my annual EIGHTY pounds of tomatoes canned in the water bath canner too! 48 jars for the winter!

I canned today too! Strawberry jam, marinara sauce and nectarines! I bought 8 pints of strawberries and it made 8 little jars of jam. I would love to make more jam, but yikes, the price of strawberries is NOT cheap this year! And so far, my failed strawberry "crop" has yielded THREE, count 'em THREE strawberries! I'm keeping my eyes open when I go to the market to see what fruits I can get to can this year for the winter too.

I have some more plans for canning. Once the potatoes are harvested, I'll be canning those since I don't have a root cellar. I'm also going to get another 40 pounds or so of tomatoes next time I go to the market, to make Marinara sauce for pizzas, spaghetti sauce and salsas.

My green tomato count so far is 66 on the plants. When they're all ready to pick, which I'm assuming will be all at the same time (!!), I may have to can some of those too. I'm getting lots of nice sweet cherry tomatoes right now as well!

The canner is such a good investment. This will save a lot of money during the winter, that's for sure. And it's fun to do! :) The next thing I want to try canning is chicken, spaghetti sauce with meat, chili and some home made soups. 

I'm excited about building my future pantry and stocking up! :) My dream for the future is to never leave my home all winter and just eat from the window garden, hopefully a nice greenhouse and the pantry! :) Wouldn't that be nice??? :)

Sources:

Articles About Taurine

This Can Turn Your Cat From Healthy to Helpless in a Shockingly Short Time

Taurine For Cats – What You Need To Know

Natural Sources of Taurine for Cats 

No Bull, Taurine Is a Must for Kitty

Answers: Homemade Cat Food, A Balancing Act

Articles About Struvite Bladder Crystals 

Don't Fall For This Bad Advice (re: Struvite Crystals)

Treating Struvite Stones and Crystals Naturally in Dogs and Cats

Lowering Your Dog’s Urine PH Levels To Decrease Bladder Stones/Struvite Stones

3 Reasons Your Dog’s Urine Kills Your Grass – And What to Do About It