Pet Food Info

We blend our own raw beef pet food, consisting of 10% Liver & Kidney, 15% Fat, and 75% muscle meat. This pet food can be fed raw or cooked.

We have dehydrated Liver & Kidney treats, dried for us by Feed This, Inc. www.feedthis.com, in Forestville CA.

We can provide many different organ meats, muscle meats, fat, and bones.
Different pets have different requirements, so please use our different pet food possibilities with your own pet’s needs in mind.

For more formulated foods, please refer to some of the pet food retailers that we supply.

See some great information below from:
http://www.worldwise.com/petfood.html
© worldwise, inc., PO Box 3360
San Rafael, CA

There is no one perfect food for every pet because each has its own individual nutritional needs. Here are the guidelines that can help you find the right diet for your pets.

CATS AND DOGS ARE CARNIVORES

Both cats and dogs in the wild would eat small raw animals as their main food. They would eat nearly all of their prey, including:
·  flesh – the main source of protein and vitamins
·  fat – a good energy source
·  bone – providing calcium and minerals
·  skin – a source of roughage
·  stomach contents – containing plant material, including herbs and grasses, and grains
You don’t have to feed your pets the most tender, expensive cuts. They are very happy with parts of animals we might not want to eat -- such as various organ meats -- which are less expensive.

Vegetarian pets. Should you feed your pet a vegetarian diet? All environmental reasons humans should reduce or eliminate their meat intake also hold true for animals. Raw meat, though, is not a problem for their health, in fact, cats must eat meat to get the amino acid taurine, found only in flesh-based protein. Without it they deteriorate and die within a year.

It is clear to me that animals’ natural instinct is to eat meat. My cat has absolutely no interest in my salad bowl, but if I’m about to eat chicken or prosciutto I have to barricade her in another room or she will jump on my plate and purr wildly.

Even if you are a vegetarian, it is important to feed your pets meat, because it is their natural diet.

RAW FOOD IS BEST

All animals eat raw, whole, living foods in the wild. There are no grocery stores, refrigerators, or stoves. There are no manufacturers processing foods and putting them in cans or boxes. Raw, whole, living foods are what animals are designed to eat.

Studies by Dr. Francis M. Pottenger over fifty years ago showed the superiority of raw food for cats. Dr. Pottenger noticed that cats fed raw meat were healthier, reproduced more easily, and had healthier kittens than cats fed cooked meat. This inspired him to embark on a carefully controlled set of scientific studies that spanned ten years and over nine hundred generations of cats.

In the study of raw versus cooked meat, the raw-meat-fed cats were friendly, even-tempered, well coordinated, and resistant to infections, fleas and parasites. Miscarriages were rare, and each generation showed striking uniformity in size and skeletal growth. Cause of death was generally old age, and autopsies revealed normal internal organs. The cooked-meat group, in contrast, showed many health problems that became worse with each successive generation—many of the same problems humans get from eating refined foods, such as arthritis and heart problems. After the third generation, all the cooked-meat-fed cats had died out.

In another experiment, Pottenger tested four kinds of milk: raw, pasteurized, evaporated, and sweetened condensed. The groups fed evaporated and sweetened milk showed the most severe degeneration, those fed pasteurized milk had problems similar to the cooked-meat-fed cats, while the cats fed raw milk produced many generations of healthy cats.

Parasites. There has been much publicity about not eating raw meat because of parasites. All animals have parasites in their intestines all the time, they only become a problem with the digestive tract is not working properly. If an animal is naturally reared, they will just digest any parasites or worms. Remember, in the wild, animals eat raw meat ALL the time.

One way to kill parasites without cooking is to freeze the meat, then thaw and serve. To add convenience, you can freeze meat into daily portions, then remove a portion each day and thaw in the refrigerator. Be sure to add the meat juice to the pet food dish as well, as it contains essential elements.

Fasting. Those who advocate a raw diet also recommend fasting pets one day a week. Fasting is part of the natural process of eating as animals in the wild do not eat on a regular schedule, they eat when there is food around to eat. So it is highly probable that they would go for a whole day without food. During the fast, you can add a bit of honey to their drinking water (two teaspoons to a pint of water), or give them water in which barley has been soaked overnight (this acts as a blood cleanser).

Making the transition. There are two transitions into a raw diet: the pet owner needs to learn how to prepare the food and become accustomed to preparing the food, and the pet needs to become acclimated to the new diet.

Preparing raw foods or other homemade recipes is certainly more time consuming. Allocate some time at the beginning to develop a food plan and figure out how you can conveniently prepare and store the foods. Having a routine makes it easier and faster.

If you think this is going to be more expensive, one comparison study found that it actually cost a bit less than buying commercial canned and dry food.

Pets who are accustomed to eating commercial foods will need to be introduced to raw foods gradually. They may not like the taste at first because raw natural foods lack the sugar, flavorings and flavor enhancers that are added to commercial foods. And, like us humans, a quick change to an all-raw diet may set in motions symptoms associated with body detoxification, which can be uncomfortable for both pet and owner.

Start slowly and add the new foods a little at a time for about a week, then each week add a little more. You can mix the new food with the old food, gradually adding more and more new food to less and less of the old food. Then start feeding one meal new, next meal old for a while, then all the new diet. Don’t feel any pressure to rush the transition. Your pet needs time for its taste buds and digestive system to adjust, and the gradual increase will help you make the food preparation transition more easily, too.

Trust your pet’s instincts about what they want to eat and what they don’t want to eat, but keep in mind if they have been eating canned and dry food all their lives their instincts might not be accurate. Once they’ve made the transition, your pets will better know what is best for them to eat.

Some pets shouldn’t eat raw foods. Raw foods are the natural diet for wild animals. Our pets, however, are not wild and have been fed since birth on commercial foods. Their bodies have adjusted to this, albeit at a lower level of health.

Since a raw diet is natural for your pets, it’s worth a try, as it is healthier. But you may also have a pet – especially if it has spent its life indoors – that is so highly bred that their bodies simply cannot process a raw diet. Perhaps it may take several generations to restore natural digestive ability. Watch your pet for signs of health and feed them what makes them healthy.

Pets that are older or sickly may not be able to make the transition. Still, for these pets it is better to feed them homemade cooked foods with high-quality ingredients, rather than commercial foods.

OTHER FOODS

Even in the wild, animals don’t eat 100% meat, so there are a few other menu items you might want to consider.

Grains. In deciding whether or not grains belong in a pet’s diet, we need to look at what that animal would eat in the wild. Cats and dogs eat animals in the wild. Birds and mice, which are food for wild cats and dogs, eat seeds, including seeds from wild grasses (grains). So while cats and dogs would not eat grains directly, they would eat a very small amount of partially digested grains in the stomach contents of prey animals. The proper ratio of meats to grains in the diet would be the same ratio as meat to stomach contents in a bird or mouse – by this model grains should be no more than 10% of the diet, preferably less.

There is no precedent in Nature for feeding cats and dogs cooked or processed grains as are found in most commercial pet foods, and as are recommended even by some who advocate a natural diet.

If you do choose to include a small amount of grains in your pet’s diet, use organically grown whole grains and feed them raw. Soak the whole grains in filtered water for 24 hours to soften and “predigest” them without cooking.

Milk and dairy products. Though it’s common knowledge that cats love cream, it is not a natural food for grown cats or dogs. For kittens and pups, milk is their natural food, but they are already getting milk from their mothers. When it is time for them to eat solid food, they should be started on a regular diet. I usually transition my kittens on cows milk for a few days, but the mama cat takes the kittens straight from her milk to freshly-killed mice.

Vegetables and fruits. These are an important part of a natural diet and are consumed in small portions by animals in the wild. Vegetables and fruits can be cut up or grated and fed raw. Remember, though, the digestive systems of dogs and cats are designed for meat --- short and rapid-moving -- so they cannot easily digest large amounts of plant food.

Grass. Both dogs and cats have been known to nibble on grass, but for different reasons. Dogs seem to eat grass as a supplement to a meat-based diet. Cats in the wild eat grass to aid their natural process of coughing up fur that accumulates in the stomach from self-grooming. You can provide indoor turf for your pet with a mini-garden of oat grass.

Garlic. The addition of raw garlic to your pet’s diets will repel fleas, deter parasites and control worms, eliminating the need for toxic flea controls and wormers. Use about a 1/4 clove for every 4 pounds of body weight. Chop or press the garlic and add it to their food.

Bones. Chewing on bones is natural for both cats and dogs as they would encounter bones when eating whole animals in the wild. In healthy animals, gastric juices contain sufficient hydrochloric acid to soften bone and release the soluble lime salts their bodies need. It is important, though, to be careful about how you give bones to your pet. Small, sharp poultry and rabbit bones can get stuck in the esophagus or digestive track and require surgery to remove. Non-splintering beef shank bones are recommended for dogs. For cats, it is probably safer to add ground bone meal to their raw meat to more closely duplicate the balance of nutrients they would obtain from a whole animal.

COMMERCIAL PET FOODS

Commercial pet foods are readily available in supermarkets, pet food stores, natural food stores, home delivery services, and online. They differ dramatically in price and quality. While these are the most convenient way to feed your pets, they generally don’t offer the best diet.

Pet food advertising assures us that canned and packaged dry pet foods will provide a more than adequate diet, but research shows that many national brands contain suspicious ingredients and do not supply sufficient nutrition.

Very little pet food is grown organically or harvested in a sustainable way. The giant blue bass was hunted to near extinction to feed our dogs and cats, and current tuna-harvesting practices for cat food (and human feed) have killed hundreds of thousands of dolphins. We manufacture and throw away billions of pet-food cans each year, adding to our garbage problems.

Canned tuna is contaminated with methyl mercury; over five times more is found in tuna cat food than is generally found in beef cat food. A study at Cornell University has shown that cats fed tuna cat food daily are less active, less playful, and less vocal than cats fed beef cat food.

The primary preservatives used in pet food are BHA, BHT, and ethoxyquin. BHA and BHT, both made from crude oil, may cause liver enlargement, reduced DNA synthesis, and allergies, and may be carcinogenic to pets.

Ethoxyquin has allegedly caused many problems in dogs, including skin and coat problems, endocrine and immune disorders, reproductive difficulties, birth defects, kidney damage, behavioral disorders, and several types of cancer. In 1997, the FDA asked manufacturers to voluntarily reduce the amount of ethoxyquin in pet foods. It is now required that ethoxyquin be listed as a preservative in any ingredient as well as in the final product.

Raw convenience foods. These are the next best choice after homemade if you need convenience. They are new to the market and come in two forms – mixes that can be added to raw meat to enhance nutrition and digestibility, and freeze-dried raw chunks that can be served out of the package or reconstituted with water. Some of these products contain grains, others do not. If these are not available at your local source of pet foods, you can order them online and have them conveniently delivered right to your door.

Canned food. Canned foods begin with the same ground ingredients used to make dry food. The chunks in “chunky” canned food are not chunks of meat, but are the same basic mix formed to look like meat with an extruder. Water is added to the basic mix to make canned food. Because canned food is heat-processed, essential vitamins and enzymes are destroyed that are present in raw food. Canned food needs supplements. Canned foods contain sweeteners and flavor enhancers to make your pet prefer them over simple raw food that gives no profit to manufacturers.

Dry food. Dry foods begin with the same mix as canned and are processed several times more. They contain as much as 50 percent grains to facilitate the extrusion process by which ingredients are formed into kibble. Typically dry foods contain about 30 percent protein, 9 to 10 percent fat, 5 percent vitamins and minerals, and the rest is carbohydrates. This balance of nutrients isn’t anything like what your pet would eat in the wild.

Mainstream pet nutritionists recommend that dry food should make up no more than 50 percent of your pet’s diet. More holistic-oriented experts say it should only be given as a treat. One veterinarian recommended no dry food saying, “Nowhere on the face of the earth do carnivores bring dry kibble back to their young.”

LABELING OF PET FOOD

The pet food industry is largely unregulated, however, there are some standards in place.

The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) sets the nutritional standards for animal feed of all kinds, including pet food, requiring minimums of protein, fat, fiber, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals.

The Center for Veterinary Medicine (part of the Food and Drug Administration) monitors health claims made on pet food labels.

About half of the states have adopted various versions of the AAFCO standards, and at least some testing is done by feed control officials. Here in California, no testing is done at all, so when pet foods fail internal quality controls, manufacturers simply send it to California, or some other state that doesn’t test.

“Complete and balanced” nutrition. Many pet foods claim to be “100% nutritionally complete and balanced.”

This is a legally binding term that ensures that all commercial pet food is equal and nutritionally alike. In order for a pet food manufacturer to print “complete and balanced” on their product, the food must meet one of two criteria set by the AAFCO: 1. The food must pass animal feeding tests for the life-stage for which it is recommended OR 2. The composition of the food must meet or exceed established nutrient levels.

In order to pass the criteria according to the first statement, pet foods are tested for nutritional quality by feeding the complete pet food to its intended users for an appropriate period, to determine whether it prevents obvious disease or malnutrition. A kitten food, for example, must be fed to a study group of weaned kittens for ten weeks. While this appears to be reasonable, a study done at the University of California Davis veterinary school showed that some foods that passed the feeding trials would not support animals over several generations, agreeing with Pottenger’s earlier experiments.

To pass using the second statement, a food must meet or exceed certain nutrient levels that have been determined by laboratory tests. Because this criterion is less expensive for the manufacturers to meet than using the feeding trials, most of the pet foods labeled “complete and balanced” have qualified using the composition standards.

The problem with composition standards is that the claim can legally be made and printed on commercial products based on information studies using isolated nutrients. The AAFCO has established tables listing every nutrient and the level at which it must be present in the food. Unfortunately, many of these listings give only minimums, not optimums. Only a few years ago it became known that cats were dying from heart failure or becoming blind because of the low taurine levels in commercial cat foods.

Measuring a food’s merit by levels of isolated nutrients tells only a partial story. There are over forty known, essential nutrients, and over fifty other nutrients are under investigation. Thus, making sure a food contains appropriate amounts of only a dozen of these nutrients can’t possibly assure that a food is “complete”.

“Natural”. The Pet Food Committee of the AAFCO has developed a feed term for the use of the word “natural” on product labels: A feed or ingredient derived solely from plant, animal, or mined sources, either in its unprocessed state or having been subject to physical processing, heat processing, rendering, purification, extraction, hydrolysis, enzymolysis or fermentation, but not having been produced by or subject to a chemically synthetic process and not containing any additives or processing aids that are chemically synthetic except in amounts as might occur unavoidably in good manufacturing practices.

Hardly sounds in its natural state to me, however it is consistent with human food labeling, which simply requires that so-called “natural” products be additive-free.

Ingredient labeling requirements.
Like human food products, ingredients in pet food products are required to be listed on the product label in descending order of weight. This can be deceptive, however, because of the common practice of “splitting” ingredients in order to give others more prominence. Chicken or chicken meal, for example, can appear as the top ingredient in a food even when there are actually more grains in the product – grains can be listed further down the list as “ground corn,” “corn gluten,” “wheat bran,” etcetera, and add up to total a higher percentage than the chicken.

Specific label terminology established by the AAFCO indicates the percentage of key ingredients:
·  “Beef for Dogs” or “Chicken Cat Food” — 95 percent of the product must be made up of this ingredient (beef or chicken). In a canned food that contains water, only 70 percent must actually be the stated ingredient (beef or chicken).
·  “dinner,” “nuggets,” “entrée,” “formula,” “platter” — at least 25 percent but less than 95 percent of the product must contain the listed ingredient. “Chicken Dinner for Cats,” for example, may or may not contain chicken as the main ingredient.
·  “with Salmon” — only 3 percent of the named ingredient is required.
·  “Beef Flavor Dog Food” — requires only a “sufficiently detectable amount” of the indicated ingredients. The product may not contain any of this meat at all, but probably gets its flavor from meals, by-products or “digests” of various parts.

Ingredient quality. The quality of ingredients are indicated on labels in several different ways.

The statement “Made with human grade ingredients” is not recognized or regulated by the AAFCO, however the makers of pet foods so labeled state that the ingredients come from foods fit for human consumption. Even so, these products may contain meats that humans do not often eat, such as oxtail, tripe, hog snouts, calves feet, chicken feet, chitterlings and head cheese. This is not to imply that these ingredients are inferior (chicken feet are known to be quite healing, for example, and they add wonderful flavor to soup), just to be aware that when the label says “human grade ingredients” those ingredients may not be ones you would choose to eat.

In addition, there are requirements for language used to describe the sources of the ingredients:
·  “Meat” and “meat by-products” — the cleaned flesh of “freshly slaughtered” animals, including various animal organs, glands, striated muscle, tongue, diaphragm, esophagus, fatty portions, skin, sinew, nerves, blood vessels, and other parts not saleable for human consumption. These are not necessarily inferior meats—some organ meats are very nutritious and readily consumed by animals—but they are in less marketable to consumers who primarily eat muscle meat. These meats are shipped to pet food manufacturers either fresh or frozen, depending on proximity.
·  “Meat meal,” “meat or poultry by-product meal,” and “meat and bone meal,” — these are made through a process called “rendering,” which removes most of the moisture and fat. Because they are more concentrated, these “meals” contain more protein than dried whole meat, which can make them look better on a nutritional analysis. They may not, however, be made from the best quality meat. The stated type of meal tells what they are made from.
·  “Meat meal” is the dried rendered product from clean flesh and skin, with or without bone.
·  ”By-product meal” is made from portions of animals not used for human consumption, including lungs, kidneys, livers, stomachs, intestines, brains, blood and bones. Poultry by-products include the head, viscera, necks, and feet of chickens or turkeys.

According to the World Health Organization, “materials that are usually treated” by rendering include animals that died on the farm, placentas, animals killed in campaigns to eradicate epizootic diseases, inedible offal from slaughterhouses and poultry processing plants, condemned carcasses, trimmings, floor sweepings, sieve remaining produced in slaughterhouses and meal industries, sludge from slaughterhouse waste water treatment plants, condemned fish and fish offal, leftover food from restaurants and food industries, cadavers of pets, strays, sport, and laboratory animals, bodies of animals slaughtered for partial use (such as fur animals, sharks, frogs, and crocodiles), recalled meat, and unsold, outdated meat still in its packaging.

Here are some terms used to describe vegetable and grain ingredients:
·  ”Ground corn” — chopped and ground corn kernels. “Corn gluten meal” is the by-product of corn syrup or starch, the dried residue remaining after the bran, germ, and starch are removed.
·  “Brown rice” — unpolished rice remaining after kernels have been removed. “Brewer’s rice” is small rice kernel fragments that have been separated from larger kernels of milled rice.
·  “Dried beet pulp” is a by-product of sugar beets used in sugar production. Though this sounds natural, it’s processed sugar.

Other by-products may be wastes from the production of soybean oil, breakfast cereals, and linseed meal.

As of this writing, there are no regulations for raw pet foods.

What to look for on the label. When choosing a canned or dry pet food, here’s what to look for on the label:
·  A superior source of protein should be the first ingredient listed — look for whole fresh meats (such as “chicken” or “beef”), or single-source animal meals (“chicken meal” instead of “poultry meal”). Look for brands that have several sources of animal protein as the top ingredients.
·  Carbohydrates should be whole and unprocessed — avoid white flour, rice husks, soybean hulls, brewer’s rice and corn gluten
·  Preservatives should be natural — choose vitamins C and E and rosemary over BHA, BHT and ethoxyquin (canned foods do not require preservatives)

Whenever, possible, of course, choose pet food products that contain organically grown ingredients.

SPECIAL FORMULA FOODS

In addition to the standard dry and canned foods, there are now an increasing number of specialty formulas for different life stages and health conditions – for hairballs, weight loss, urinary problems, adults, seniors… For a specific health claim to be made, approval is required from the Food and Drug Administration. Technically, pet food manufacturers are not making health claims, but their advertising tactics give the impression that these special formulas are medically superior.

Choosing a specific formula for a health condition is probably not the best way to treat a health problem. Feeding a good, nutritious whole food diet will support good health and minimize the development of conditions that require medical attention.

Special foods can help specific problems, however, and it is more natural to use foods as medicines rather than drugs. To treat hairballs, for example, cats respond to sardines, fish oil, olive oil, finely chopped wheat or oat grass, finely grated carrot and other raw vegetables, bran, and ground flaxseed. Just a small amount (less than 1/2 teaspoon) added to their food can make a difference.

FEEDING

While some recommend feeding the same foods consistently, the more natural way is to feed a variety of foods. Animals can develop allergies to foods just as people do, and this generally occurs when the same food is eaten frequently.

In Nature, the availability of foods changes seasonally, so as creatures of Nature it just makes sense for pets to eat a variety of foods. In addition, out in the wild, there are no supermarkets supplying a consistent diet, so even on a daily basis animals in the wild eat a variety of foods. Nature arranged variety because no single food is complete and perfect – variety ensures that all of our and our pet’s nutritional needs are met.

Portions. Remember that pet bodies are much smaller than ours, so feed them proportionally. Keep in mind that in the wild, their biggest meal was generally a bird or mouse.

Try to learn and follow your pet’s requests for food as their needs may change at different times of year, or at different stages of their lives. New mothers need to be fed differently if they are feeding their offspring. My cat will come meow and lead me to the bowl when she wants to be fed. If I don’t put out the right food, she will meow until I get it right. Sometimes I will hand feed her by tossing bits of meat or cheese on the floor, as if they are little animals. She loves that and will come back for more until she has had enough. This helps me learn how much to feed her. Also, if I don’t feed her enough raw meat, she will hunt down a mouse and put it in her food bowl to tell me what she wants.

Meal time. Feed your pet regularly morning and evening. Don’t leave dry food out all day for pets to munch on. Manufacturers formulate dry foods with flavor enhancers and pets over eat them like we eat junk food. Leave raw and dry food out for no more than 20 minutes. Store any leftovers and wash the dish.

WATER

Give your pet purified water to drink. Chlorine, fluoride and other water pollutants are no better for our pets than they are for us. Fresh water should always be available in a bowl. Change the water at least morning and evening as oxygen dissipates from water that sits and it has less vitality.

Apple cider vinegar. Add a teaspoon of raw apple cider vinegar from the natural food store to one pint of water in a non-metal bowl. It is said to work wonders for everything from obesity to infertility. It can be used every day as a mild tonic. It also speeds recovery from any illness.