Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Food scare prompts pet owners to retreat to own kitchens.

Something someone posted in Live Journal:


hi, i feed my cats a raw meat diet. homemade cat & dog food is a great idea, i'm just here to tell you, there are things to know about their nutrition that make their diets a little more complicated than just cooking food at home. here's a good article about how cats need special supplements, please do a lot of research before starting your pets on homemade food. they have different needs than we do:
http://www.thepetcenter.com/imtop/catsaredif.html

and this woman is an excellent resource for raw food & holistic pet health:
http://www.catnutrition.org/index.html


As anyone else with a pet, I've been watching this pet food recall closely, doing research, et cetera. Diamond means the world to me... you'd have to hospitalize me if Diamond died any time in the near future. ...Perhaps someday if I married I could cope with such a loss without a temporary stay in a rubber room, but not now.

Anyway, I read (and hear, etc.) that a lot of people are resorting to home-cooking meals for their pets. Personally I couldn't POSSIBLY afford to do it right, so I'm not even going to try. By asking a local pet store, I've found out that a brand called Natural Choice doesn't contain any wheat gluten, or other glutens, so I'll probably be switching to that. Diamond's vet told me last month that Diamond should have wet food about once a week for his kidney health, so I've already bought some, and Diamond's tried the "Venison and green pea," and liked it a lot. (Then again,it was GUSHY FOODS, so he could be just grateful. But he did eat it cheefully.)

I listened to some guest on CNN speak disnmissively about how "its just too hard" for people to home cook for their pets. Now, I disagree with her dismissiveness and I don't think it's THAT hard for anyone who is willing to make an honest effort at it.

At the same time, I hope people are bieng VERY cautious if they do decide to get into the home pet food hobby for their beloved animals, I agree that it IS more involved that it would seem.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

the people i've read so far highly recommend wellness wet food as well [human grade meat & no grain filler]. i transitioned my cats off kibble with it, adding a little water, and their coats got softer, thicker & shinier in the first week.

another nice thing you can do for your cat is get some wild salmon oil in gel caps [bottles of it go rancid quickly with air exposure] and squeeze them into their food. they love the smell & flavor, and it's really good for them [something added to all raw food diets].

Anonymous said...

We have a pack of 6 farm dogs and they all mean the world to our family. And we have fed a raw food diet for years.

But there are so many products out there that are supposed to be raw that aren't. And this craze of "cooking for your pet" is going to hurt alot of animals. You should NEVER cook meat meant for a dog.

Another thing I see being tossed around that is so incorrect is the idea that bones are bad for dogs. Again, absolutely incorrect. CooCooked bones are bad dogs. Raw bones are an essential factor for thier health.

We only feed Oma's Pride meats b/c they come from the same processing plant that produces human consumption products and everything is USDA inspected. We are in Houston so we order from http://www.thedinnerbowl.com but there are quality raw suppliers all over the country.

And really b/c we feed so much less raw (2.5% of the body a day) versus kibble (easily twice that to keep weight) it isn't that much more expensive. It gets expensive when people go to Kroger or some other retail grocery store or when they order from a distant vendor.

We love our animals and the small amount of time and pennie is well worth thier health.

N. Rodovsky said...

Thanks for the comments from the both of you, that's very interesting information!