I have four useful dogs but dogfood costs me almost .70 cents/pound for the good stuff (meat byproducts as the first ingredient). Does anyone know of a less expensive yet healthy way to keep dogs?

-- Calvin Kalmon (calvin@dwave.net), September 17, 2001

Answers

What kind of dogs are they? Do they work? pull anything? how active are they? I have a couple of reciepes but they are for active dog sledding dogs. let me know.

-- TomK(mich) (tjk@cac.net), September 17, 2001.

I use dogchow by purina and I've been quite happy with it. It is about $14 for 50 lbs. Plus I collect weight circles for their proclub and get $48 back (in checks towards more food) for each 600 lbs of food I buy. Which if you figure in the cash back I'm paying $10 per 50 pounds or 20 cents per pound.

The dogs also get table scraps. They love potato peelings that have been baked in the oven (when you are cooking something else anyway) with a little oil.

Anita

-- anita (anitaholton@mindspring.com), September 17, 2001.

Calvin,

look up BARF, should actually be B.A.R.F. unappetizing word, but it stands for "biologically appropriate raw food" also stands for "bones and raw food".

The idea is to feed your dogs a food that is more natural to what they would eat if not fed bag or canned foods. Raw meaty bones, marrow bones, fruits and vegetables. Not much different then what they are getting now. Less expensive? not if you have to purchase everything, but if you are raising your own vegetables and meat, you give your dogs the entrails, heads, feet and all the left overs from your table .. minus cooked bones!!! never never feed cooked bones. The bones become dried out and will splinter. Raw bones are soft and digest in the dogs stomach. There is always a case where a dog will die from ingesting bones. It happens.

If you are interested in making your own dog food, you can take all your bones (usually saved up and frozen until ready to cook) and pressure cook them until they are so soft they become mush. Mix that with vegetables and grains and feed to dogs. (can be canned)

The above all cooked to a mush stage in pressure cooker, placed on baking sheets, placed in the oven on very low heat until dry. Break up and feed to dogs - dried dog food.

Now doesn't 70 cents a pound sound much easier?

Seriously, look up BARF in any search engine, if nothing more it will give you some great ideas on what to feed your dogs to give them all the nutrients they need should you decide to try making your own food. There are also recipes on line to make dog food.

I feed mine BARF and free feed kibble. - Rabbits are very easy to raise and not that expensive to get started if you build your own cages.

-- westbrook (westbrook_farms@yahoo.com), September 17, 2001.

Well Calvin here's my 2 cents worth, how about raising and growing your own dog food and feeding BARF=bones and raw food (bones too)! Ad to this your garden veggies, then I also give daily to this; hen fruit, 1/4 cup cottage cheese with kelp, flaxseed oil, garlic, natural yeast and a daily multivitamin. My dogs have been eating BARF for approx. a year now and doing great! I have posted many times before a good website I venture to frequently, let me know if you would like me to repost it.

Have a Good'en, Debb

-- Debb LA/MS (fly45@bellsouth.net), September 17, 2001.

I am so excited about using the BARF eating method for my dogs! They are looking so much more healthy and you can tell they feel better! Also my older dogs teeth are getting cleaner and I was thinking of taking her to get them cleaned! Actually her teeth are a lot better! When we first started her she did not eat them as well, but now she crunches away with everyone else. I got this from the site mentioned on here somewhere called Shirleyswellnesscafe. I also feed flax and kelp, vitamin c and some vegies. We are having to buy food right now but I will not be for long. I have also found chicken leg parts to be the cheapest and easiest for them to digest versus pork.

Lynn

-- Lynn (johnnypfc@yahoo.com), September 17, 2001.

More Barf -

You can butcher or buy meat and grind the entire carcass, bones and all if you don't want your dogs eating whole raw bones.

-- westbrook (westbrook_farms@yahoo.com), September 17, 2001.

Wal-mart carries a high protein dog food that is 50 pounds for 13.00 dollars, to which I add canola oil and a powdered mixture of garlic, nutritional yeast, and kelp. The dogs ( four big ones over 50 pounds each) thrive on it, and have no ticks, fleas, or skin problems at all. I have used their dog food for over 8 years now and have found no more reasonably priced food that is not totally worthless anywhere.

-- Annie Miller in SE OH (annie@1st.net), September 17, 2001.

Just a little FYI. Animal by-products listed as the first ingredient doesn't necessarily mean that it's good for your pet. Those by- products are often made up of things that a dog can't digest, like ground up feathers from chickens, hooves, bones, hides, not to mention all the artery clogging fat we won't eat, that has been cut away from meat. Commercial dog food is no better for your dog than commercial processed human food is for us. If you really want good food for your dog, you are going to have to make it yourself.

-- Julie (rjbk@together.net), September 17, 2001.

Stewer Rabbits are cheap to fed to dogs. When our rabbits become to old to produce well they are butchered. The stewers make excellent dog food especially the bucks. As they get older the bucks sometimes develope a taste we just don't care for, but the dogs do not mind! My Border Collie who is difficult to keep weight on does well with rabbit stew added to his kibble. I have sold rabbit meat from $ 1.25 to $ 2.50 a pound for dog food. Make friends with a rabbit producer, I know if someone would help me butcher I would make a good dealon the rabbit meat!! Denise

-- Denise K. (Rabbitmom2@webbworks.com), September 18, 2001.

I had a friend in the south pacific who fed her dogs rice and fish or rice and vegetables.

-- hendo (redgate@echoweb.net), September 18, 2001.

Calvin, see if you cant find a local butcher shop, you know the kind that you can get a side of beef through, from local farmers, cut and wrapped to your orders. I used to work in one of those, and I know that at the end of the day, they have a lot of "sawdust" in the bottom of their saw housing. It is bone and meat dust. -Perfect dogfood. You can buy it very cheap. They can even wrap it in lb packages and freeze it for you.

-- daffodyllady (daffodyllady@yahoo.com), September 18, 2001.

do be careful about the "high protein" trap. Too much protein is bad for the kidneys. Include lots of veggies and some fruit . There is a reason why wild predators go for the stomach contents of the prey they kill before eating the muscle tissue.

-- Little Quacker (carouselxing@juno.com), September 18, 2001.

More commercial dogfoods are worthless, but I must make one correction Chicken Feathers cannot be called crude protien, but they are used in dog food and labeled as crude fibre, gross either way

-- Dianne (yankeeterrier@hotmail.com), September 21, 2001.

Dianne, ground chicken feathers are made into meal, which then are counted as protein in animal feed. Fish and Feather meal are cheap filler proteins mostly found in goat feeds and hog feeds :) And yes you are right, either way you want to look at it is disgusting! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), September 21, 2001.