Wean

We are beginning to wean the Roseannadannas.

Force-weaning is unnecessary, and frankly a bit barbaric. Unless a bitch cannot nurse her pups -- mastitis is commonly the cause -- there's almost never a reason to pull them cold-turkey off her milk.* Mother will wean, and the gradual process is part of their physical development and education as social beings.

Rosie feeds her babies when she feels the need to now, not whenever she is with them and they are hungry. This means that she is starting to tell them no. Sometimes Hell No. She's got the clawed breasts and chewed nipples to justify it.

I was reflecting on the advice we trainers all give to owners -- the injunction to, above all else, be consistent.

But Rosie -- their first teacher -- is not at all consistent. Sometimes she will let them nurse, sometimes she won't. Sometimes she just exits stage left, sometimes she is quite forceful and scary in her nipple-denying tactics, even seeming to practice entrapment by not choosing to walk away when she easily could do so. Downright erratic.

Is Rosie then a bad mother? Or are dog mothers a bad template for teaching things to puppies and dogs? Shouldn't we throw out Nature's horribly flawed schematics and adopt the cold perfection of the Skinner box and the dolphin tank?

This begs the question, what is Rosie teaching her pups?

If the lesson was meant to be "You can't nurse anymore," then Rosie would be a mercurial tutor.

What if the lesson is something else?

Perhaps "You are no longer a helpless blind hamster; your needs will not be met before you are even aware of them, ever again. Deal with it."

Or, "You will ask before invading the personal space of a superior being."

Or, "Because I'm the Mommy, that's why."

Or even, "Don't let the door hit ya in the ass on your way to your new home." (Extended goodbye version.)

I think it is the pinpoint edge of the general principle that leads from infancy to full social adulthood: Love, she is conditional after all.

I think unconditional love ends for every mammal the day she bites Mommy's nipple hard enough to hurt. From that day on, we need to control our selfish impulse to atrocity in order to merit care and acceptance. This is a good thing.

So Mommy starts saying no, and we humans, who will (collectively) continue to nurture and guide long after her crucial job is completed, take over a little of her first role as food-givers and contingency-enforcers.

This will be the second litter I have weaned on raw meat, hand-fed. I found the conventional kibble-derived puppy-gruel to be unsatisfactory in several ways -- the mess (smelly, crusty puppies), the excessive competition among the pups, the repeated salvos of attacking yellowjackets, and the gawdawful diarrhea that my vet prescribed "special" food to correct.

I start them for the first few days on "satin balls" -- a rich firm mixture of ground beef (our dog beef has heart and liver in it), eggs, cereal, and some nifty supplements (recipe below). Puppies quickly discover that they love meat, and also that I am made of it. The hand-feeding is an opportunity for them to learn that I love them, but that this love does not extend to allowing them to feast on my living flesh. (For starters.) They don't learn to sit for a cookie or take a treat politely at four weeks of age -- they learn the groundwork for those and every other shred of good manners they will later acquire.




I mentioned posting the recipe for satin balls in the clip. This is the one I use, with a nutrient analysis. The Knox Joint Gelatin /Osteo Bi-Flex is harder to get than the TEN packets of gelatin in other versions of this recipe, but much cheaper.

Ingredient	Amount	Calories	Fat	Protein	Carbs	Calcium
Ground beef, 70% lean	10#	15060	1361 g	651 g	0	1089 mg
Total Cereal	Box (12 oz)	1134	6g	23g	261g	1134 mg
Oatmeal	Box (18 oz)	1914	38g	64g	344g	0
Wheat germ	Jar (12 oz)	1225	33g	79g	176g	133 mg
Olive oil (vegetable oil)	1 1/4 cup	2387	270g	0	0	3 mg
Unsulfured molasses	1 1/4 cup	602	0	0	147g	1872 mg
Raw Eggs	10 large	735	50g	63g	4g	265 mg
Knox Joint Gelatin (Osteo bi-flex nutrajoint)	3 oz **	250	0	100	0	0
Flaxseed Oil	1/4 cup	482	55g	0	0	0
Salt	pinch	0	0	0	0	0
Total	15# mixed	23,789	1,813 g	980 g	932 g	4496 mg
Amounts per pound		1586	121 g	65 g	62 g	300 mg
Per one-ounce ball		99	8 g	4 g	4 g	19 mg

Whiz the cereal in the food processor or smash it up by stomping on the inner bag. I like the cereal to be very fine, and even food-process the dry oatmeal.

Mix all ingredients in a really big bowl. Get in there with your hands, a spoon will not do it. Add some more eggs or a little water if too stiff.

Roll into little balls and freeze, or freeze big clumps in ziploc bags.

Puts weight onto sick, starved, parasitized, and recovering dogs, and poor keepers. Good during times of stress -- such as nursing, hunting, SAR missions. Not for fat dogs!

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* I have been reminded that it is common in certain breeds to take Momma away from her own offspring before she kills them. Literally. I consider this a flashing neon sign of rather vulgar proportions in the window of Nature's shop that says "DON'T MAKE MORE OF THESE."

** The analysis for the Osteo Bi-Flex Nutrajoint / Knox Joint Gelatin is not quite on -- when I did this analysis all I had was Knox plain gelatin, which is what you see in many satin balls recipes. This stuff has more calcium and less protein than plain gelatin. I had a hard time finding it, finally sent PC to a K-Mart in Ross that had it.

Food/Feed Part One: Nitrogen is Nitrogen

The students at Sheep School (aka classes offered in conjunction with the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival) were a mixed lot: a few experienced small commercial stockmen and women, hobby farmers, hand-spinners, pet herders, stockdog handlers, and farmers new to sheep. And me, the stock farmer wannabe; closing on our farm was still a week away.

The instructor for our integrated pest management class was a bit ADHD and very widely knowledgeable, so the course strayed a bit from the closely-defined curriculum. At times, quite a bit. We spent a good deal of time discussing general nutrition. How to balance a ration, how much protein was necessary, working with the feed mill for custom mixes, computing supplements for animals on pasture. And making use of "waste." One student fed bakery discards to his flock. Another was exploring a deal with the produce manager of a supermarket. Good economy if one could ensure that the animals got proper nourishment, if their "ration" was "balanced" overall.

Then the skeptical question, from one of the more experienced students: What about this thing he had read about, feeding poultry litter to sheep?

Whaaa?

For those of you whose brains are reflexively vomiting back what you just read (and good for those brains, that is the right reflex), I'm afraid, yes, he was referring to feeding chicken shit, feathers, and soiled sawdust (corncobs, peanut hulls, shredded paper, whatever) to sheep. To animals that evolved to eat God's grass. To animals that are eaten by humans. Whose milk is consumed by humans.

Most of us in the class had to have this clarified and explained too. Not because we were thick.

It's worse than just that, though. What is the source of "poultry litter" to be added to the silage for sheep, goats, cattle? Not the smallholder's wholesome happy henhouse, but, of course, the industrial broiler factories, "vertically integrated" McNugget mechanisms where hundreds of thousands of freakish hybrid birds are crammed together for the short duration of their lives, scarfing down pellets laced with subclinical antibiotics, growing at an astonishing rate, and shitting prodigiously.

The instructor's official response came straight from the playbook of industrial agribusiness: Well, nitrogen is nitrogen.

Translation, long form: As long as an animal receives known chemical nutrients in the right amounts and relative proportions, as determined by science, it doesn't matter what foods it eats.

"Food" is presented as a quaint vehicle for delivering chemical nutrients. No, not "food." "Feed." If livestock eat it, it is not even dignified as "food."

A joke: April Fool's broadcast of NPR's All Things Considered in the early 90's. The well-crafted spoof spotlights the growing practice among organic gardeners of skipping the middleman and eating delicious, rich, nutritious finished compost.

Okay, cute. Funny part was listener reaction the next day. There were the clueless who never got it, and earnestly wrote and called in to solemnly warn about the dangers of pathogens in compost. And the pinched and humorless, who upbraided the wicked reporters for their irresponsibility, invoking the legions of listeners led astray, and out to the corner of the garden with a spoon.

Little did they know.

Sitting in that tent in Maryland, I remembered the previous year's pet food recalls. Are nutrients packaged and marketed for dogs and cats "food" or "feed?" On the bag it says "food." The pet-owning consumer likes to think of it as food, no scare quotes. The industry periodically drops into referring to it as feed, same as the pellets and crumbles and grain mixes sold for poultry, cattle, horses.

Dog and cat food, or feed, was systematically killing beloved pets because, somewhere at a factory in China, someone had discovered that a cheap industrial plastic could be added to agricultural commodities to make them appear to be higher in protein. It was cheaper to add waste plastic (impure "melamine scrap") to grain products so that when these products were tested for "crude protein," they would appear to be more valuable than they were.

What does the simple, cheap "crude protein" test detect? Not protein, but nitrogen -- an element that is lacking in lipids and carbohydrates, but abundantly present in the amino acids that form proteins.

Logical enough. If nitrogen is part of a food, it is tied up in the protein. Measure nitrogen, you measure protein. Why would one expect anything else?

But that's not quite true of "feed." Ruminant animals -- cows, sheep, goats, camels, deer, etc. -- can, to some extent, utilize free nitrogen as nourishment. The microbial symbionts in their reticulorumens (first two "stomachs") are able to convert non-amino acid nitrogen to both microbial amino acids and -- if an excess is present --ammonia, used as an energy source. The animal does not digest this free nitrogen (as well as undigestible cellulose) itself -- the animal digests the microbes that have eaten these uneatable feeds. And their poop.

Feedlots have been adding urea to the already unnatural rations of cattle for decades. Since the feedlot steer is not meant to live to adulthood, what does it matter that his kidneys are being destroyed? The captive-bolt will beat fatal organ breakdown by a few months. There isn't even the conceit of optimizing steer nutrition for health and well-being. Cheapest way per pound to cover bone with meat over the course of the next few months.

Monogastric animals -- dogs, cats, chickens, horses, almost everyone, including us -- don't carry around a belly-load of symbionts ready to digest these particular undigestibles for us. Nitrogen that isn't chained into an amino acid is useless to our innards.

So that's the basic biochemistry -- the reason the ag-school expert was willing to pronounce that "nitrogen is nitrogen," even when faced with a practice that, from her paralanguage, evoked the same disgust in her as it did in the rest of us. Official line: Industrial chicken-shit and prime alfalfa -- same diff to a sheep's symbionts. Do the math. Use what's cheap.

A notion that has grown rather more legs than are justified by sciences and disciplines beyond the basic biochemistry involved in a nutrient analysis.

Does it make sense from the standpoint of evolutionary biology?

Well, there are animals that consume the feces of other animals for nourishment. They are called scavengers. If you've kept an aquarium, you've likely employed catfish or snails in this capacity. Sheep are not among them. Sheep have evolved to to eat grass.

The will to ignore the observed facts of biology comes from the conceit that, because we understand more about the chemistry of nutrition today than we did a hundred years ago, we know everything about it.

Does it compute from a public health perspective?

Factory broilers consume sub-clinical doses of antibiotics from the day they hatch to the day before they are slaughtered.

Does your lamb chop need to consume megadoses of not only the antibiotic residue in the chicken shit, but the mutant coliform bacteria themselves?

Does it pass the sniff test of food safety?

The melamine in US infant formula wasn't dumped into the milk powder from a vat. It was concentrated in the kidneys of cows fed contaminated "feed."

The contention that "nitrogen is nitrogen" -- could that be the underlying industriagra conceit that gave us Mad Cow/scrapie/Creuzfeldt-Jacob? That poisoned dogs and cats who were eating a "balanced" and "scientific" ration? That has destroyed the kidneys of uncounted Chinese infants? That has American cows' milk testing positive for the same a fossil-fuel-based contamination that "couldn't happen here?"

Has this conceit clambered up the food chain to become "fat is fat" -- which has given us industrially-altered trans-fats and their attendant heart disease -- or that "sugar is sugar" -- whereby chemically mutated high-fructose corn syrup replaces cane sugar?


Are eaters -- and feeders of eaters -- falling prey to a sad shadow of physics envy -- and regarding as "sciencey" the neatly quantified pronouncements of industrial nutrient peddlers? I see an agribusiness creep -- from livestock "feed" through pet "feed/food" to ConAgra's interpretation of "food" for humans

The goal of the feed seller is to get away with the maximum markup between raw material cost and the feed bag on the shelf at Agway. Some can spin chicken shit into gold.

The goal of the commodity farmer is to get the maximum production for the least cost. A broiler chicken's lifespan is eight weeks; a lamb's, eight months; a steer's, eighteen months. No one is worrying about cancer or blindness or kidney failure striking down Ferdinand in middle age.

Pet owners were surprised in 2007, when we found out that the feed sellers did not ethically distinguish between beloved pets and working dogs and future lamb chops.

Charter of Freewarren

A Note for Naysayers

Nobody, even the most avid animal-rights fanatics, needs to worry about depriving caged rabbits of their liberty. Those born in confinement don't know what liberty is; they are not deprived of anything.

Also, you will note I advise housing rabbits only in wire hutches. If you house them this way you and the rabbits will do just fine. But if you let a rabbit out, you are asking for trouble ... That goes for pet rabbits, too. The wire hutch is ideal. Keep them there, except perhaps to hold and pet them.

-- Bob Bennet, Storey's Guide to Raising Rabbits

We are now wabbit wanchers.

I'd been looking into this for some time. We raise the pastured meat chickens in the summer and fill the freezer, make a little money selling them. We hunt, and a friend is raising pigs, one of which we'll buy a whole or half-interest in. Hair sheep and perhaps a feeder steer are in the works.

In addition, I wanted to explore a fast avenue to fresh meat in the winter and year-round, something that wasn't dependent on freezer storage. And a varied diet is important for us and the dogs, yes? Americans eat way too much chicken and beef.

I am not sure whether we are okay with my devoted-to-pet-rabbit friends. I am respectful of their sensibilities. I hope we can all come to an understanding about animal welfare, and the touchy problem of pet v. livestock within a species.

I've had pet rabbits in the past. The archetypal bunny-in-a-backyard hutch as a child. A house rabbit as an adult. The latter demonstrated the range of a rabbit's social capacities, and the species' need for enrichment. I've also delivered several abandoned bunnies to house rabbit rescue folks, in the days before Pittsburgh shelters accepted them, and acquaintances who found pets dumped in the park would call the crazy animal lady to take this thing out of their bathtub.

I don't care whether it is livestock or pet, solitary living in a backyard hutch is not species appropriate.

What do all animals need? Fresh air, sunlight*, wholesome food and clean water, general hygiene, and the opportunity to move about freely.

What do rabbits need, specifically? The opportunity to dig and chew, social interaction with other rabbits, including the chance to play and groom, hidey-holes, enough space so that they don't feel driven to fight one another.

Bob Bennet can join Frank Perdue, Salmonella Jack DeCoster, this knuckle-dragging gap-toothed hick -- and the rest of the livestock abuse industry -- in kissing my shiny white ass. My rabbits are going to get what they need.

I guess I am rather broad in my definition of "need." Obviously, animals survive, grow, and reproduce without any of those things. Cattle put on weight in feedlots, hens lay while their feet have grown into the cage like a tree grows into a fence, and rabbits breed like bunnies while their hocks rub raw on wire floors. A bitch in a puppymill pumps out little lurve-objects for cuteness consumers while eating rancid food, drinking filthy water, living in solitary confinement in a cramped cage, never seeing the sun or breathing fresh air, covered in shit and shot through with parasites. Biologically speaking, hope springs eternal. A plant that is barely hanging on -- a tomato languishing in a nursery six-pack, unplanted, or a weed in a sidewalk crack -- puts everything it's got into producing a few sickly fruit and seeds. Things could get better for my descendants, so I better make sure I have some toot sweet.

99% of rabbit breeders keep their livestock / petstock in individual wire-bottomed cages. It's orderly, takes little room, easier to keep somewhat clean, and easier to control breeding. The good breeders -- the ones who care about animal welfare -- use larger cages, provide resting boards, give the does roommates when they can get along (bucks are either fighting or fucking in a cage situation), make sure the cages are high enough that the rabbits can stretch out vertically, meerkat-like, which is something rabbits really like to do.

I got my four foundation rabbits from a breeder who has a locally excellent reputation. Her cages were large, and all the animals are in good condition.

They are Californians, one of the two most common meat breeds. I asked for animals that had excellent production conformation, without regard to fancy points such as "correct" coloration. I got a buck and three does that are of good production quality and unrelated. (I also considered cross-breeding to increase hybrid vigor, and will probably do this when I start breeding this buck's daughters -- buy a New Zealand buck to breed to them.) I do like the Californians, though, because their dark points are just variable enough that I can tell individuals apart by markings, without checking ear tattoos. This will become important, as you'll see.

I'd read about colony-raising of rabbits, and am going to try it.

The Brandywine freewarren. The walls are either block or wire-covered wood. The floor is concrete covered with rubber stall mat and thickly bedded with sawdust topped with straw. There is a high window for daylight, which doesn't open, but I'll be replacing it with one that does. It took the rabbits about five days to really start digging; they now have a nice labyrinth around the bales. It took them perhaps three days to recognize fresh greens and fruit as food, and a week or so to become comfortable with the space and climb the bales a little. I haven't seen anyone binky yet, but that doesn't mean they aren't doing it when I'm not there.

Although rabbits come in quite a few breeds, and artificial selection for functional traits and fancy points has obviously worked many changes on them, I don't consider them a truly domestic animal. Demi-domesticated, like white mice, ferrets, budgerigars, and, in a rather different way, my knuckleheaded African guinea fowl. They've lived among humans for too short a time, and too peripherally for most of it. They can't be managed in flocks or herds the way chickens, goats, cattle, etc. can.

Romans used to keep colonies in leprosaria leporaria† -- stone-walled gardens or pits from which the rabbits could not tunnel -- but did not control breeding. The leporaria kept the rabbits convenient for the catching, and provided some protection from predators. They were something like a fenced Texas game-ranch set up for canned hunts, but without the repulsive conceit of "sport."**

Rabbits became "domesticated" some time in the Middle Ages. When Pope Gregory I designated laurices as fish for the purposes of Lent and other fast days, monks and others were motivated to propagate rabbits under closer husbandry.

A laurice is a fetal or newborn rabbit, eaten guts and all. A "delicacy."

Yeah, I know. Moving along ...

In early medieval England, rabbits were introduced from the Continent and managed in open colonies established by landlords who purchased charters of free-warren from the king. The charter gave the holder the right to manage and kill rabbits, hares, pheasants and partridge in specified game preserves -- warrens. Warreners were hired to protect the colonies, create artificial earths for the rabbits, and catch them (usually with ferrets and nets) for the table or sale. It took hundreds of years of protection under extensive husbandry for the Iberian rabbits to adapt well enough to the British climate and naturalize. At the same time, warreners in some places practiced some selection for fur color in their colonies, presumably by culling the common-colored animals and preserving the eye-catching sports.

I have not been able to come up with a word in English that describes animals (or plants) occupying and evolving in this limbo between managed wild game and domestic livestock. Commensal is not right. Yet it must have been a stage in the domestication of many species, though it would look different depending on the ethology of the species and the point in technological and cultural history at which it happened. No haughty monarch was presuming to grant or deny the right of freewarren when the chickens came home to roost and the sheep joined the human fold.

Neither will the modern efficiency experts who see sentient creatures as units of meatwidget production dictate the "right" way for my stock -- livestock -- to live.
____________

* Unless one is, say, a naked mole rat.
† I am not certain of this word. The OED does not verify it, but then, it's not English. My student's Latin dictionary doesn't have it, but then, it's not the O.L.D. The term later was applied to leper colonies. An erudite reader provides the correct word, see comments!
** The Romans reserved that fiction for the arena.

Call for Recipes

Homeless baby Briar says she is hungry. You can help!

You say you want my marinara recipe?

The one that I spend September cooking up and canning, imprisoning the tangy essence of summer in glass jars of goodness that nourish us two or three times a week all year?

The recipe that is so fantastic that my Sicilian husband uses it as a base for almost all his Italian cooking -- tomatoes grown and transformed by his Irish wife? (There has got to be a word for shiksa in Italian.)

Well I'm not going to give it to you.

But you can get it.

Heads up, I'm sending it in to the National English Shepherd Rescue cookbook project. NESR will start taking orders for this communal cookery tome at the end of September.

Meanwhile, you can help homeless English shepherds by contributing your favorite recipes to the cookbook. Our peerless editor, Dianne, writes:

National English Shepherd Rescue is an all-volunteer, non-profit breed rescue group working to place English shepherds in need of new homes. We are currently collecting recipes for our second edition cookbook. We're looking for everything from appetizers, soups and salads, to main dishes, side dishes, desserts, canning and preserves, crockpot ideas, and special treats for dogs. Basically, if your family likes it, we want it! Please include your name, city, state/province/country, and the name(s) of your dog(s) so that we can give you proper credit for your submission.

We've already started work on the layout, so please don't wait until the September 30 deadline to send your recipes in! Submissions should be emailed to: cookbook@corbia.com. (We will begin taking pre-orders at the end of September!) For more information about NESR, please visit our website: www.nesr.info

I know there are some talented cooks and some keepers of old family recipes reading here. Pass the torch and help some deserving dogs in need! There is no limit to the number of recipes you can send.

I'll also be providing my recipes for chocolate chili, hot pepper jelly, Lilly's Choice dog biscuits, Dijon vinaigrette, coq a vin, and perhaps a few more as they occur to me.

Dianne told me about a simple cheese-based dessert that caused me to invoke several deities in vain when she merely described it. Wouldn't you just like to know? I swear, bring this thing to a holiday party, and people will gnaw their way through Santa Claus to get at it. It will be in the book, but I won't tell you anything more. You just have to buy it.

And if anyone has a recipe for really crispy dill pickles, there is an entire collective of English shepherd-owning wimmin who will bow down before you.

RIP Dale "Supersize" McNugget 4/14/09-6/6/10

Dale McNugget passed away peacefully and rather suddenly in the sunny barnyard, surrounded by her flockmates, this afternoon.

The proximal cause of death was pulmonary failure. This was secondary to what I would have called morbid obesity -- except, on necropsy, she really had very little body fat. She was just one enormous chicken.

Hybrid broiler birds are not designed by artificial selection to live long, healthy lives. Had Dale been a conventional cornish cross hen, she would have been unlikely to live four months, much less fourteen. Because she was a "freedom ranger," she was a little better equipped to live in the world. But she was still too heavy to flutter up to the roost with the other hens, spending her nights on the coop floor with the ducks and the two auxiliary Dales -- hens who escaped capture on processing day last July. She laid eggs under the nest boxes* after she became too large to fit inside one -- or rather, too large to get out once she had squeezed in. Later I installed a large covered cat litter box as a floor-level nest box for the former McNuggets.

I started limiting the plus-sized girls' access to feed a few months ago, gating them out of the coop during the day by installing a creep on the pop door that the smaller chickens could slip through, but kept the three big girls outside to forage on pasture rather than hog down layer feed. It didn't seem to make a lot of difference in their weights, but they did become more active.

Of course I'm ambivalent about the very existence of hybrid broiler chickens, let alone the lives they usually lead. That those will be short is a given; knowing this and feeling a bit guilty about it, we endeavor to eliminate nasty and brutish from the list of options. There are currently fifteen Cartmans living in a chicken tractor in the pasture; they'd have grown just fine in a stall in the barn, but a chicken should breath fresh air and eat bugs and grass. They'd also be fairly content confined to the tractor, but I open it up during the day so they can shuffle around a bit, and sack out in the tall grass along the old fenceline when they want to, and dustbathe. To the extent their genetics allows, they get to be chickens during their very short span on this earth.

There are 76 new McNuggets growing feathers in preparation for their own move out to pasture, where they'll live behind electronet at night, range free for much of the day, and have even more chicken-like and slightly longer lives.

But their genetics dictate, always, that those lives will be short. Not even an internet rabble with money in their teeth will convince me to hold back any meat birds from this years' flocks. I do not believe it is kind.

I think of the short lives of giant breed dogs, and how their hearts so often give out. The incredibly plastic canine genome can produce 200 pound dog bodies, but not the hearts to run them.

One of the two auxiliary Dales died a month or so ago; her heart was at least four times normal size.

I didn't weigh Dale after my mom found her still-warm body this afternoon. But a necropsy on a chicken is another way of saying "dressed out," with a little more haruspicy. She makes at least a dozen dog meals -- feeding five English shepherds and one hollow-legged German shepherd -- in other words, you could easily feed an English shepherd for a week on one chicken. She must have been at least sixteen pounds alive.

I took her skin, head, and intestines out to the Fox Stump at the far end of the south pasture, where we leave offerings to the vulpine neighbors in exchange for respect for our living flock. Think of it as a sky burial.

____________

* She had no fewer than eight eggs at various stages of growth queued up in her oviduct.

When do you sprinkle on the melamime?

Waste not, want not

My Dad asked for my "dog food recipe" for a friend of his. I explained that I don't have one; it's a little bit like asking for the Houlie food recipe.

I didn't have a recipe for my chili, either, but when enough people bugged me for it, I made a batch of chili and reverse-engineered a set of guidelines -- here's what I did to make this batch, and it was a pretty good one. Alter at will.

So, a week of dog eats at Brandywine Farm.

I'm currently feeding five English shepherds (weight from 35-55 pounds) and one German shepherd (about 70 pounds). One ES is an easy keeper, and is pretty severely portion-restricted, two are pretty average, and two are foster dogs who were overly lean when they arrived and eat quite a bit for their sizes. The GSD is a hard keeper, very lean and eats a lot for her size. Nevertheless, the smallest ES eats almost as much as the GSD -- he's a young guy, very active, putting on a lot of muscle, and making up for stuff.

All the dogs are in lean-to-average body condition. Well, "average" is perhaps the wrong term to use, given the prevalence of clinical obesity among American dogs. Let's call it "medium" in the interests of clarity.

No one has any allergies or sensitivities or an especially tender tummy. Only one has been on a home-made diet her entire life; the rest were transitioned from kibble. We still use quality kibble when traveling or especially pressed for time.

I get the ground beef from a local slaughterhouse. It is beef scrap, hearts, and liver. It is fairly fatty and very wholesome. It is sold only for dog food, and at a good price. No, I will not tell you where or how much. They sometimes run out and don't have it when I need it as it is. I scavenge bones from them when they are cutting on the day I come by, so the availability of raw consumable beef/pork bones is variable. Right now I have a lot. The meaty bones are probably 60% meat by weight. I would not give bovine vertebrae if my source was industrially-raised cattle, but I feel confident about the local mostly-grass-fed cattle that people raise at home and have processed for their own use. I get tripe from a different slaughterhouse that is farther away, but willing to save them for me.

If I couldn't get the ground, they'd be eating a lot more chicken necks and backs, and leg quarters. I'd also be more bullish about raising a steer or three here.

Do not feed cooked bones!

Sunday breakfast
3# ground beef (raw)
3/4# (dry weight, before cooking) cooked rice
6 multivitamin supplements
6 fish oil capsules

Sunday dinner
3# ground
4 large sweet potatoes, cooked
1/3 cup ground dried eggshell
6 raw frozen chicken feet, toenails cut off

Monday breakfast
@ 5-6# raw meaty beef bones (ribs, vertebrae, other edible bones)

Monday dinner
3# ground
8 large dog biscuits
6 multivitamin tablets
6 fish oil capsules

Tuesday breakfast
2# ground
8 hard-boiled chicken or duck eggs
1/2 package frozen green beans, cooked
6 multivitamin tablets
6 fish oil capsules

Tuesday dinner
3# ground
1# (dry weight) whole wheat pasta, cooked

Wednesday breakfast
3# ground
3/4# (dry weight) rice, cooked
2 bananas
6 multivitamin tablets
6 fish oil capsules

Wednesday dinner
4 large turkey necks, raw, partly frozen

Thursday breakfast
2# ground
8 hard-boiled chicken or duck eggs
5 or 6 carrots, cooked
3/4 cup ground dried eggshell
6 multivitamin tablets
6 fish oil capsules

Thursday dinner
3# beef tripe, raw, unbleached, barely hosed off, partly thawed
3/4# (dry weight) rice, cooked

Friday breakfast
4 or 5 chicken leg quarters, raw, partly frozen

Friday dinner
3# ground
1# (dry weight) pasta, cooked
6 multivitamin tablets
6 fish oil capsules

Saturday breakfast
3# pork scraps from pig roast, cooked
3/4# (dry weight) rice, cooked
6 multivitamin tablets
6 fish oil capsules

Saturday dinner
1# beef liver and spleen
8 boiled eggs
1 can peas
1 loaf whole-wheat bread (made at home in bread machine)

Other things I feed when I have them -- almost all fresh veggies from the garden (not cabbage family -- these dogs sleep in my room), venison when we can get it, canned mackerel, any other fish when we can get it, chicken necks, pig's feet, and cut-up whole turkeys bought when they are cheap in November. (I partly thaw, cut out the breast to roast for us, and feed the rest to the dogs.) I feed more tripe when I have it; it's one of the best foods to put a glow on a dog, and just generally get them feeling good. And they love it. But it is repulsive -- looks and smells like a flood-damaged rec-room carpet after two weeks of August heat.

I usually get poultry in 40# cases from Jo-Mar in Pittsburgh's Strip. But I watch for supermarket sales, especially seasonal loss-leaders, and stock the freezers.

I use a good multivitamin supplement from Vetriscience the same guys who make Glycoflex. Some of the dogs get Glycoflex as a prophylactic, though no one has any joint issues at the moment -- including our ten-year-old SAR partner. I don't get any kickbacks from Vetriscience, though I wouldn't turn it down if they offered.

Because rice is pretty low protein and can be overly high in phosphorus, I'm going to start phasing in the bread for more meals. Since the machine makes it, the only increase in work is in the additional measuring. (We also have a rice cooker -- great convenience.) Price is comparable to rice, calorie-for-calorie. We buy both flour and rice at Costco, whole wheat flour at Frankferd Farms. (Again, no kickbacks, but I am entirely corruptible, so bring it on.) Pasta is more expensive, but quicker to whip up if I didn't plan. Bulgur is also a good change of pace.

They could probably do with more vegetables.

There are many sources of information on home-made and raw feeding on the web. Many are fundamentalist jihadi feeders -- if you aren't feeding your dog the exact way they dictate, well, then, you are an animal abuser who hates his pet. Whatever.

I don't need a degree in nutrition science to feed myself, and I don't need one to feed a few dogs. I did do a fair amount of reading, including this text, as I came up with our "system," such as it is.

We were feeding home-made well before the 2007 pet food recalls.

Whoa Shep, That's Not For You

Janeen over at Smartdogs and Patrick at Terrierman have covered most of the bases on the HSUS scam that is "Humane Choice" pseudo-vegan dog food. (Not tested on animals.)

There's ways to gradually kill a dog through malnutrition that are a lot cheaper

Trust me, dogs love chicken feed. Nom nom nom. And feeding it to a housepet will allow you to experience the hygenic pleasures of poultry standards of sphincter control right in your own home.*

Plus it gives the dog a sporting chance. His "food" bowl could possibly attract a chicken, which he could then kill and eat.

I have been particularly impressed by the marketing for this granola.

Because a picture of a sneering shiny lobbyist in an a bespoke suit, $200 hair, and Very Expensive Dentistry always says great animal nutrition to me. And absolutely nothing about egomaniacal self-promotion in the absence of any self-awareness or internal editing capacity. Why not put Wayne right on the label? It would support my blink impression of the bag, in which I read the product name as "Human Choice."

Human Choice is made out of people!

Which have plenty of bio-available protein. I'm told. And if they are North American people, lots of fat for energy and flavah. Probably not so much if they are Uruguayan people. Nevertheless, long pig is long pig. Why rot it underground?

But no, they took the conventional route, the cheap choice, the trope that will play in Peoria, and put a picture of a cute mongrel puppy on the bag.

Which would be fine, except they come right out and admit that you must not feed this silage to puppies.

Yup, it is formulated for "adult maintenance." Same as the kibbled cornmeal 'n' slaughterhouse sweepings that you can buy in the dollar store (for about 1/20th the price per pound). In theory, it meets the threshold for keeping a dog alive as long as it isn't growing, lactating, working, sick, or stressed out in any way. They didn't even bother with an AAFCO feeding trial.** On paper, the forage-in-a-bag will keep 75% of adult dogs alive for six months.

But not a puppy.

Which is the very thing they put a picture of on the bag.

Kind of like this bag:






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* I suspect that, given the instructions for converting your dog from a food eater into an Uruguayan vegan over 4-6 weeks, this "food" might offer that very same benefit.

** Eight dogs. Six months. You can kill two of them and still get a pass. I am not making this up.

Lilly's Choice Biscuits

Ten years ago, Lilly was the celebrity judge for a dog biscuit baking contest at a local animal shelter's fundraising fair.

Mel was disqualified for being insufficiently discriminating in her "food" choices. But she did a dandy demonstration of opening dog-proof containers.

This was the winning recipe, and I've never found a dog who disagreed with Lilly about it.

I usually make a double batch of these, and will cook some up tonight. I got a lot of shredded cheese very cheap -- the local stores are pricing them as loss leaders this week.


Lilly's Choice Biscuits

Ingredients:

1 cup rolled oats (oatmeal)
1/3 cup butter or margerine
1 cup boiling water

3/4 cup corn meal
1 tablespoon sugar
1-2 teaspoons bouillon (I use the paste-type soup base)
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella
1 cup (4 oz by weight) shredded cheddar
1/2 cup milk
1 beaten egg

2-3 cups all-purpose or whole wheat flour

Pre-heat oven to 325
Grease cookie sheets

In large bowl combine
oats
butter/margarine
boiling water

Set aside for ten minutes while the oats swell up.

Mix in well
cornmeal
sugar
bouillon
milk
cheese
egg

Add flour one cup at a time, mixing each cup in well. This will form a stiff dough. Continue adding flour while kneading in to dough ball on a floured surface until dough is smooth and no longer sticky -- about 3-4 minutes of kneading. Roll dough* to 1/2" thickness. Cut out with cookie cutters.

Place 1 inch apart on greased cookie sheets. Bake for 35-45 minutes -- until golden brown. Smack Professor Chaos' hand with spatula as he steals them. (These are delicious, but once cooled, a bit hard for human teeth). Cool completely before storing.

* I use a pastry cloth and stockinette roller cover for all my pastry rolling needs now. Has made life much easier.