Feeding dogs from your own farm

Jennifer Smith  "listenstohorses" wrote:
I believe wheat grass is like a super food for everyone...
wheat grass juice has all kinds of health benifits, no? 

Oats and oat grass is super horse feed....

Any fresh green veggies are healthful, Wheat grass is just trendy. Bears also eat grass, the tender young shoots are actually calorie positive. Additionally if you eat the grass that has hardened off (like many dogs will do) the silicon chips that the blades form to protect themselves induce retching, which can help a dog get rid of stomach worms.

Our dogs are fond of carrots and some other veggies.  Their dry food diet is Evo Primal/Ancestral 76% meat, low carb.  Supposed to be good, but who knows.

Our puppy likes the Hostas my wife transplanted a couple of weeks ago next to the front walkway.  Tonight he was lying beside one he had defoliated and was eating the tender stems.  He's gone through 3 plants already and we were wondering if they are harmful to him.  So far no problems, but he loves eating plants and dirt.  Any thoughts about the dirt eating also?

Chickens love Hostas too - so I wouldn't think they are bad for your puppy.

As I type this, I'm looking out my window watching my duck eat my garlic plant's leaves - oh well.

No thoughts on dirt except that it shouldn't hurt.  Maybe your puppy is craving some minerals?

Jami McBride wrote:
Chickens love Hostas too - so I wouldn't think they are bad for your puppy.

As I type this, I'm looking out my window watching my duck eat my garlic plant's leaves - oh well.

No thoughts on dirt except that it shouldn't hurt.  Maybe your puppy is craving some minerals?

Jamie,  that's what I thought about the dirt eating at first.  I did a Google search a while back and you get as many saying it is not a mineral deficiency as there are that say it is.  Who knows?

Here's another one that no one, including the Vet, has an answer for.  Our dogs love to pull out worms and roll on top of them on their backs and rub their faces on them.  All of our four do it, yet there is no clear reason.  I always thought it was either some kind of dog perfume or scent camouflage.

I'm glad your chickens have not had problems with the Hostas, which should mean our puppy is safe.  He looked so content eating his Hosta salad my wife asked him if he wanted a little olive oil and vinegar to drizzle over it.

Our Dane loves berries. He practically vacuums raspberries and blueberries off the bushes.

I'm interested in hearing about any dogfood alternatives, because we buy ours by the pallet load.

I used to make my dog an oatmeal treat on Sunday mornings, with chicken broth, beef suet,  & gizzards chopped up, we also added carrots & kasha.
She enjoyed it but I don't think it is an every day meal.

Wow this is some interesting stuff.  I never thought about feeding a dog from my own garden before.  What a great idea!  I have so many questions I don't know where to begin.

How often do you feed your dogs rabbits or chickens? 
How many do you feed them at a time?
It doesn't seem only just rabbits or chickens would be a good diet, what else do you feed them from your garden along with the rabbits?  Or do you need to feed them store bought dog food?
What is the best way to dispatch the rabbit or chicken? Or do you let the dog do that?

There are several websites devoted to feeding dogs 'naturally'.  With amounts, recipes and percentages, even proper fasting procedures as canines in the wild do not eat from an endless feast. 

Try Google-ing raw diet for dogs or natural raw diet for pets

Here's an example recipe:

A list of ingredients to feed in your kennel:

    * Raw Meat - Any raw muscle meat will work, I feed turkey hamburger because of price but normal hamburger is also just as good.
    * A raw egg 3 to 5 times per week (with the shell)
    * Turkey necks, chicken necks or chicken backs
    * Chopped Veggie pulp (carrots, cauliflower, celery, green beans etc)
    * Kelp and alfalfa - the fine powdered type
    * Powdered vitamin C
    * Essential Fatty Acids
          o Cod liver oil
          o Salmon oil OMEGA 3 - VERY IMPORTANT EVER DAY
          o Flaxseed oil
    * Glucosamine Powder (99% pure)
    * Vitamin E - EXTREMELY IMPORTANT - YOUR DOG MUST HAVE THIS !!!
1- I cannot stress enough that you need to give your dog Vitamin E every day of its life. To gain the most beneficial effect from Vitamin E you also need to give Omega 3 (salmon oil every day) In my kennel I give each dog 2 Vitamin E pills (I probably could get by with one but they are cheap and an extra E pill per day will never hurt a dog) I also give one Omega 3 pill for every 10 pounds of body weight per day (a 80 pound dog gets 8 Omega 3 pills) If a dog does not eat the capsules you can cut the gel caps up and drain them. I personally feed the liquid salmon oil that we sell. It's not cheap but its very good. I give my pups 3 pumps per day adult dogs get 4 pumps per day.

2-In times of stress you should increase the amount of vitamin C that your dog gets

3 -When you have a pregnant bitch or a bitch that you are going to breed get her on folic acid

4 -Lactating bitches should get Red Raspberry Leaves

5 -Try and feed a pregnant bitch liver or heart meat once or twice a week (cut back on cod liver oil if you feed liver)

5-There are many more herbs and vitamins that people can consider for the pets. I will not go into all of them here. At the end of this article I have listed some excellent books that I would recommend to anyone who has an interest in the health of their dog.

Here are the recommended books: http://leerburg.com/diet.htm
Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats by Kymythy Schultz
Grow Your Pups with Bones by Ian Billinghurst
Give Your Dog a Bone by Ian Billinghurst
The Nature of Animal Healing by Martin Goldstein

Thanks Jami this is great ifo., next time I'm making dog food I'll be sure to check back here.

Stop pets digging up your yard.

(I read a thread in the Missoula Eco-forums that was so interesting I thought I would share part of it here)

"How can we keep the dogs from digging, or doing their business for that matter, in the planted areas? We have some wire fencing. I'm not sure if that will keep them out if they are really determined. They might think our garden is "the place to be" if they see us hanging out in there a lot. Any suggestions? Help please! We want to have everything ready when it's time to plant outside."
by Destini Vaile

"I had the same problem of my dog constantly digging holes in my back yard.  It seemed like every time that I would get the holes filled in the next day she would have dug them back up again.  A little trick that I learned to keep her from digging was to put a blown up balloon in the hole and then fill it up with dirt again.  When the dog goes to dig the hole up she will pop the balloon with her paws, startling her.  I had to do this a couple of times, but after a while she realized that digging holes was associated with the loud popping noise, which was something that she didn't like.

On a side note as for the cats try putting pine cones in things that you don't want them to dig up.  (Cats usually don't like the feel on their paws)"
by Caitlin Elder

To read the entire thread go here:

https://permies.com/permaculture-forums/3245_0/missoula-eco-forum/missoula-loves-dogs

not sure but would an egg heavy diet tend to make them raid the chickens eggs?? I don't knkow but just a thought

now I don't feel so weird about my dog eating up all the windfall pears last year
he even had a big pile hidden behind the bushes

I am fortunate enough to receive lots of scraps/leftovers/trimmings and bones during hunting and butchering season from people in my area for my dogs.

I need to find away to preserve and store them so that they last longer. At this time, I don't have electricity (haven't had any for more than four years), no real refridgeration... I use zeer pots in the summer and snow in the winter, but hunting season tends to fall between the two.....)

I would also like to bottle some as use for puppy food (1 planned litter for 2011).

Suggestions?
Thanks!

Feral wrote:

I need to find away to preserve and store them so that they last longer.
Suggestions?
Thanks!

How about making jerky out of it?
And...

Al Loria wrote:
Our dogs love to pull out worms and roll on top of them on their backs and rub their faces on them. 

My dog likes to roll in the little piles of worm castings at the entrance to their tunnels.  Could be a connection there.
Dogs are great!  I am a strong believer in training and socializing them, too.

I don't know. I've never made jerky.... I'm talking a very large quantity of meat. I've thought of salting it... but don't know how well that would work.

I feed my dogs road kill scraps but the more I learn to utilize for myself and the more I overcome my cultured ideas of whats edible,the less I have to share with them.They like most stuff raw but I have to cook coyote or dog to get them to eat it.Still,Im not sure that dogs are too sustainable esp. if you are spending time raising food for them which begs the question of what other areas of ones life are being subsidised with unsustainable practices to make time to raise dog food?.And also what are you feeding the creatures you are raising for dog food?Dogs love people poop and since I poop outside it always takes some time to train them not to dig it up and eat it as they turn to that the second they get hungry.They must be adaptable because Bagdad has killed 58k dogs in the last year.Too bad muslims dont eat dog or they might be alittle closer to sustainability.

My dogs add an incredible richness and value to my life. When life is totally stripped down to a level of survival, they can be a tool that makes the difference between survival or not. My dogs depend on me. I depend on them. They are tools, they are companions I consider them priceless as either one or the other.  As for sustainable... well, dogs have been around in one form or another for a very, very long time.

In most cases I would hesitate to feed my dogs road kill. I would be concerned about contamination from fecal matter/spoilage. Also areas in meat which have been bruised tend to spoil faster. Where I live it is illegal to take road kill..... there is an area set aside where the county puts the carcasses. It's a regular buffet for predators, winged and legged.

Well, I've got my old dog Scout back -- he was having problems with the people who took him last fall, but is very happy to be home (he's 3/4 English Shepherd, 1/4 Collie, and I've had him since he was eight weeks old.  He's almost ten years old now.  Guess it was futile to hope that he'd be able to make a transition to another home.  But my other dog, the one that had killed a couple of my chickens, seems to be doing fine with her new owner, thankfully.)

Scout was started as a puppy on goat milk, and continued to get it after I got him; even now, he can still digest milk just fine.  Since we have plenty, he still gets milk or kefir with his dog food or table scraps.  It may also help that he's descended from those shepherd dogs that were always fed on milk and rolled oats -- the ones who couldn't tolerate that diet didn't make it. 

His diet is mostly a medium quality dog food and either milk or kefir, but he gets a raw egg once a week, sometimes a cooked egg or two during the week if we have plenty of them, a few table scraps, and the occasional culled chicken or a rabbit.  It's a varied diet, and he seems to be doing just fine on it.  He prefers milk to raw meat -- I have to let him get hungry before he'll eat a chicken or rabbit, and even then I have to cut them open for him.  I think that it would have helped if we'd started him on stuff like that when he was a small puppy.

Kathleen

Yea,starting as a puppy helps or having a dog that already knows that they can watch and grow curious/jealous over.Both of my dogs were captured and/or domesticated from the local wild dog pack so eating rotting stuff comes second nature but eating fruit had to be taught through obsevation of other dogs and the older one still scoffs.Feral:true they can help people survive if they are trained to work with them but I question if they actually bring in more than they eat and how long that could be maintained or how large of a population(of people) could be maintained using said meathods.Like any technology dogs bred for hunting allow for overharvesting.Sight hounds are credited with the extinction of several species in the middle east.The dutch and belgians pretty much eliminated ducks in their areas using koiker dogs bred to lure ducks by the flock into nets.My neighbor has killed hundreds of bear with his hounds and if given free range would be able to make them extinct in our area.Do bird dogs eat more than they get?Dogs for protection is more a civilization thing and many breeds were bred by and for wealthy romans.These seem the less sustainable but also somewhat neccesary these days.The least sustainable are companion dogs and its no secret that dog food is made with imported meat while people in the exporting countries starve.

I think it depends on what you use your dogs for and how. I also think it's really important to pick a breed that is versatile. I do consider being a "companion" as a function.  There are so many possible functions!

guardian, herding, sledding or pulling, retrieving, fetching (gonna separate this one out a bit from hunting), tugging, scent work, companionship, predator control, mobility... oh how this list can go on. I think many people are simply not aware of the potential that dogs have, but it's critical to pick the right breed of dog and it's also critical to know how to train to get the maximum results from that dog.

Oh yeah... then there's dog hair as a fiber........

I have yet to find a single thing or activity that cant be rationalized as functional so I wont doubt you on that.Yea,natives here in the PacificNW had dogs(or domesticated coyotes) for hair/fiber but Im sure they ate them and the dogs ate their poop which I believe is what makes dog culture sustainable. That said,I do have dogs and supplement scraps with dog food,but I do alot of other unsustainable things too.

I feed my dog the rest of my meal from the day before. I mix some oats, some shreddred flax seeds and some dog food in it. Sometimes I add a drop of olive or rapseed oil. My dog loves carrots and nuts like mad, too. I give her Walnuts (which she likes best), Hazelnuts and Almonds. When I ask her "Do you want a nut?" this 11 year old lady starts acting like she is 3 years again. All nuts with shell, no problem. Almonds included. I can't even get Almonds open with a nut cracker (without starving anyway), damn it!

Mt.goat wrote:
I have yet to find a single thing or activity that cant be rationalized as functional so I wont doubt you on that.Yea,natives here in the PacificNW had dogs(or domesticated coyotes) for hair/fiber but Im sure they ate them and the dogs ate their poop which I believe is what makes dog culture sustainable. That said,I do have dogs and supplement scraps with dog food,but I do alot of other unsustainable things too.

Dog's are superb at finding game and grabbing a hold of it, but not so good at making a kill. Humans are good at finding game but bad at grabbing a hold of it, but excellent at making a kill. Together they are doubly good at finding game and great at getting a hold of it and great at killing it. That is what made dog culture sustainable for 15,000 years. Additionally Dogs can help control rodents and turn the abundant lagomorph problems that farmers can end up with into a steady supply of meat for an entire family. They are very good at protecting and defending and feeing humans.

I'm sorry Wombat, but all greyhounds were bred to kill rabbits. Predators in general are that way. If your eyes are on the front of your head you are a predator.

In the wild carnivores eat the whole rabbit;  hair, ears, bones etc... It all serves some purpose in their digestive system.

Most dogs have been raised on commercial dog food,as well as several generations before them,  and I am not sure they could adapt well to a totally "natural" food.

I am not afraid to supplement my dogs feed, but I do feed a good quality feed as a base.

Emerson:if the last 15k years were so sustainable than why are people on here looking for "solutions".Clearly we have taken some wrong turns and while some dog cultures are sustainable,many are not.Lets not forget that the middle east was once very lush and at some point the use of dogs in that area was limited only to royalty and sport as the game dissapeared.My post was meant to explore some things a dog culture could do to avoid such a fate.While they are good at feeding humans(in more ways than one)it seems like the farms around here that get them end up also buying dog food so something must be missing from the equation.First people get livestock and they start buying grain,then they get a protection dog and start buying dog food.If the current models are sustainable,then why are people buying more and more stuff?I can appreciate you defense of convention though.

Emerson White wrote:
Any fresh green veggies are healthful, Wheat grass is just trendy. Bears also eat grass, the tender young shoots are actually calorie positive. Additionally if you eat the grass that has hardened off (like many dogs will do) the silicon chips that the blades form to protect themselves induce retching, which can help a dog get rid of stomach worms.

Not so fast thar Emerson! Annual grass in the tender boot stage is far more nutritious than your average fresh green veggie, or when compared to annual grass. It's also very low in poisons compared to most plants. Also, from what I have read, not only is it more nutrient dense, the nutrients are far more bio-available.
Supposedly though, Oat grass can be even more nutritious than any green land plant that has ever been tested, I would venture to guess that perhaps wheat grass tastes better? Or perhaps Wigmore chose it because Wheat is the most ubiquitous grain throughout the world?

Mt.goat wrote:
Emerson:if the last 15k years were so sustainable than why are people on here looking for "solutions".Clearly we have taken some wrong turns and while some dog cultures are sustainable,many are not.Lets not forget that the middle east was once very lush and at some point the use of dogs in that area was limited only to royalty and sport as the game dissapeared.My post was meant to explore some things a dog culture could do to avoid such a fate.While they are good at feeding humans(in more ways than one)it seems like the farms around here that get them end up also buying dog food so something must be missing from the equation.First people get livestock and they start buying grain,then they get a protection dog and start buying dog food.If the current models are sustainable,then why are people buying more and more stuff?I can appreciate you defense of convention though.

It boggles my mind that you seem to be blaming dogs for the state of the world. There was a news item some years ago that there was a very small band of extremely rare deer found in a remote desert area..the only ones known in the wild; that conservationists asked be protected. Instead the  guy who controlled the area  went out and shot them all..presumably so he could have some sort of identity in the history books as the person who shot the last wild  whateveritwas. This is the sort of attitude which has put the world into the state it's in, dogs are no more to blame than the fire he used to cook the liver  of the last doe.

I heard the other day some pretty compelling evidence that humans are scavengers who have learned to be predators, and that explains a lot ..As far as your example, I know a number of grain farmers who deal in hundreds sometimes thousands of acres, and they all buy bread. Are you going to blame dogs for that?  I lived next door for a while to a 60 000 hen chicken house, but the people never ate any of them.  Even when they were all going off to be killed and a bunch escaped, they were abandoned to whatever fate awaited them while the owners went to town and bought chicken. Nobody there even owned a dog.

There have been a couple of islands where dogs were dropped and allowed to go feral which have caused havoc, but many more examples of cats and rabbits and goats.

OTOH  dogs have saved innumerable lives, not only from bad guys two and four footed but also such things as the sled dogs taking medicines across the arctic in a time of an epidemic; dogs caring for autistic chilren and allowing blind , epileptic and other people with such problems to live independant lives. They may have been used to track criminals but they have also rescued people who are lost or from avalanches and the ocean. There are many many cases where a companion dog has made the difference between a life worth living and one not. They have been used (killed in horrific ways at times) in the study of such things as iron lungs which saved hundreds if not more children from dying of polio.There are thousands of ways that the dog has enriched human experience.

A dog will be true to his nature as a dog; if man has warped and abused  that ; it's not the dog's fault. Perhaps one of the most pertinent  points comes to mind from a photo of a young soldier holding his dog..as a species we sometimes do horrific things and perhaps the companionship of a good dog is one of the few things that helps us toward the better part of ourselves.

Our dogs mostly eat mice and other small game they catch, predators who foolishly come inside the boundaries, meat from our farm (mostly pork, some chickens) and occasionally dry dog food from the store (cereal to them - not what they like). They chant - "Meat, meat, meat!" (They have a hand sign for it. They are less fond of fat. ("Not-Meat" in their hand signs) See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2006/02/feeding-big-dogs.html

Bones are dearly loved. We feed chicken and pork bones. Cooked and raw. Never had a problem but these are big dogs. I have been told that the toy dogs have more trouble with digestion.

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:
If you are keeping poultry for eggs, what you could do is feed the dog (s) basically whatever your family is eating, and add cooked eggs to that (raw egg only once a week or they'll get a biotin deficiency). 

Don't worry. There is no problem with biotin deficiency if they are whole raw eggs.
Bodybuilders, boxers and other athletes are well known for eating a lot of egg whites. It has been  found that some of these athletes have experienced biotin deficiencies. By the time the general public passed this information around it has changed from raw egg whites to raw eggs.

Raw egg whites contain a protein called avidin, which can deplete your dog of biotin, one of the B vitamins. Biotin is essential to your dog’s growth and coat health. The lack of it can cause hair loss, weakness, growth retardation, or skeleton deformity. Raw egg yolks contain enough biotin to prevent the deficiency, so this is not a problem with raw whole eggs.

http://lacetoleather.com/fataltodogs.html

Eggs I cook but but for the reason that it doubles the available protein. It is easy to boil eggs and the dogs & pigs can eat them right along with the shells. We keep a lot of layer hens free ranging on the farm because they eat insect pests. This is our organic insect pest control. Mice too. The result is most of the year we have a lot of extra eggs which are great for the dogs and pigs.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa

One of the best ways to keep our pets healthy is to feed them natural and nutritious pet foods. There are many good suppliers on the internet and the pet specialty stores also offer a good variety. Do your research and finding the right food should not be a problem. Doing so can reduce vet bill and the pain and heartache of seeing your loving pet suffer.

There are also some herbs that are beneficial to our pets.

Natural Pet Care

Fortunately, if you're homesteading with any livestock, you probably have your own source of top quality food for your cats and dogs, in addition to the all-they-can-catch-and-eat buffet of mice, voles, moles, chipmonks and such. This saves the need to buy dog food.

for what its worth, ive read that the chow chow was raised for meat purposes.  and was fed a diet of rice all its life till butchering time.

Otis likes pecans.

Currently I feed him a chicken and rice dog food that they sell at the feed store in Weatherford that is milled in Muenster, TX. I get a 50 lb bag every two or three weeks. I suppose I could make my own food for him. We did that back in the 80s for a short time using old venison that had been around for a while and mixing it with some oatmeal and a few other things, I think.

He also likes the stinkiest tripe treats I can find. They're usually the most expensive thing in the pet food store here in Oak Cliff, and the lady who owns it is akin to a crack dealer for Otis. I could just as easily gather tripe myself and put it in the dehydrator, but I hate to stink up the house doing that if I have the scratch for the store-bought type.

This is an area of permie living I hadn't contemplated very seriously. I think once I have rabbits and goats and such again it'll be something to investigate.

This is O:

I realize this is an old post, however, I just posted this in a similar thread and thought it might be helpful to anyone reading through, like me. :)
(I've never fed insects, and tend to discourage my dogs from catching their own, as they sometimes try to eat stinging things.)

My German Shepherd dog was raised around chickens and has eaten raw chicken meat daily his entire life. He comes with me to collect eggs, too, and is calm around the girls, even sticking his face into their coop to say hello. :) I've had a Maremma as a LGD for chickens and sheep who ate a raw diet of chicken meat, as well. He required much less training to be protective and safe around the farm animals, as those were his natural instincts.

That said, I have spent plenty of time working with my GSD to be calm around chickens with my own calm energy, as well as training down-stays, recalls, and "leave-it" thoroughly. He has very high prey drive and loves to chase anything loud, flappy, and/or fast. (Oh, deer!) He once chased a sick, hysterical, flapping, screeching chicken and caught her with his mouth, immediately let her go, then sat next to her as I caught up with them. She survived the ordeal, thankfully, with no injuries! So, I think one DEFINITELY needs to be mindful of natural drives with certain breeds.

Personally, I've raised rabbits and chickens and have harvested both myself. I find it much easier to harvest chickens, and feel defeathering is much easier and faster than skinning. (And rabbits are FAR TOO LEAN as a sole or primary source of sustenance for doggos - they need much higher fat ratios!) I've been seriously thinking about raising quail for my dog and myself, as I get too attached to my chickens and don't have enough of a flock to feed him daily.

Incidentally, my boy is about 90 lbs and typically eats four thighs or two leg-thigh pieces daily (raw, with skin and bones - it's the cooked/dried out bones that splinter and are dangerous), with a small amount of pureed veggies and various supplements to mimic prey. I feed whole "prey" when available. I'm not at all opposed to feeding without skinning/defeathering, etc. and trust my dogs to eat what they need.

If you're just starting out feeding dogs raw, or actually, even if you've been feeding raw successfully for years, I highly recommend Dr. Peter Dobias' free recipe maker which has an AMAZING amount of reliable information about a huge variety potential protein sources and other essential ingredients. 💙🐾