Wednesday 31 October 2007

the dog food industry

While Penny was snoozing today and I was working at my computer on an article for Astarte's mega-zine, [This link no longer works, because the site was taken down after the sad death of the gifted editor, Stacey Apeitos] an online craft magazine (sorry about the non-dog advertising), I checked my email and found I had a newsletter from rawmeatybones.com. It was a treasure trove of information and I must admit I got side-tracked from my writing for quite a while.

Dr Tom Lonsdale reported that an article of his on pet feeding had been published in Nexus Magazine. It was not the entire text of the article, but the whole thing can be read at rawmeatybones together with many other press clippings about feeding of carnivores.

The link that I found fascinatingly awful was a long report in the New York Times about the petfood industry. It's definitely not for the fainthearted but I couldn't stop reading.

In reading Dr Lonsdale's work I was reminded that originally I intended to feed Penny whole carcasses, or as near to that as I could manage. I'm afraid that we have slipped from this - but she does get the major part of her diet as raw meaty bones.

However, we include some vegetable matter. It's mostly Vets All Natural grain mix and also left-over vegetable parts. I put them through our juicer in order to partly-digest them before Penny gets them.

I read somewhere that it is better to have a masticating juicer because the juicing process breaks down the cell walls of the vegetable matter and makes it more likely to be digested by a dog. My juicer is a Champion Juicer and works by that method.

In a discussion of juicing processes I read that:
the juice from a masticating juicer may be refrigerated and stored for up to 24 hours, while maintaining an acceptable nutrient quality
In fact, I freeze the juice, mixed back in with the pulp - I hope that still contains the vitamins that Penny needs.

The Vets All Natural site mentioned above has some interesting articles, especially the one titled 'Feeding Raw Bones to Cats & Dogs'

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