Man got to experience the insanity that is dog food making night. It's really pretty simple now that I have it down, but I can see how, to an "outsider" it looks pretty crazy. On a day to day basis, I save up all my fruit and veggie scraps (except things that have gone bad or that the dogs can't have, like grapes and onions) in zip top bags. Once I get a full bag, I stick it in the freezer. On cooking night, I pull them all out and run them through the food processor. I have found the dogs eat their veggies a whole lot better if everything in the bowl is roughly the same consistency. I get 40lb boxes of turkey scraps from Kopp Turkey, a local poultry shop, in Harrison for $8.00 a box. Although it's a lot of meat to deal with at one time, it's just too awesome a deal to pass up! I run that through the meat grinder so now I have ground turkey, and the beef I buy already ground, in bulk from the grocery store. I get organs from my favorite butcher, Stehlin's, who not only has the best sausage in the world (sorry, just had to get a plug in for them, since they really are awesome!) but also packs any organs left in 8-9lb bags so there is no waste when they butcher and sells it as dog food, for about $2.00 a pound. They'll also cut bones to any size you want, to give the dogs a great source of calcium, as well as something to chew on, but that's a whole other post!
Okay, so back to last night. Although making your own dog food is not an exact science, I try to get things pretty close to what I've learned in my research. Basically, I set up an assembly line. I set out my ground meats, my organs and my veggies along with a digital scale, two large bowls and my potato masher. I know what you're thinking, "a potato masher? What the heck!?" but trust me, it's the best mixing tool I've come across so far! I do 1 part veggies, 1 part organs, 4 parts red meat (mostly ground beef, but sometimes I mix in some pork or lamb) and 4 parts poultry (I use mostly turkey, since I get it so cheaply, but I add in chicken when I have it. My dogs get chicken in other ways [again, another post], so I don't worry about them not having a balance of their meats). I used to use a measuring cup to get this balance, but I have found that using the scale with a bowl on it (so the scale doesn't get all messy) is a lot easier and faster. I have two bowls going - one on the scale and the other one (a GIANT one) to throw all the stuff in once it's measured out, so this process takes up my entire kitchen counter. I think that's the biggest thing that overwhelmed Man last night. So once I've got my balance right, I add the other goodies (garlic to prevent fleas, honey for allergies, etc.) and get to mixing. I have tried countless methods of combining these raw ingredients, but have found that the hand held potato masher works best for me. I can mush, twist, mash and stir all with one tool and it really does make it easy to incorporate everything pretty quickly. I have to keep in mind, too, that it doesn't have to be mixed perfectly, because (1) I feed both dogs out of the same container of food, so odds are it will get mixed up more while I'm dishing it out into their food bowls and (2) it's good for dogs to have a variety in their meals! Once it's all mixed up, I spoon the meal into a freezer safe containers. I try to keep the containers relatively small so I never have raw turkey sitting in my fridge for days on end and have found that the Gladware containers that lunchmeat comes in are the perfect size for two days worth of meals for my dogs.
Some people may think I'm crazy for going to this much work to feed my dogs, but when you think about it, it's really not much trouble and saves me a lot of money. I spent about two hours last night, between prep work, making the food and clean up and made about 16 pounds of food. For my dogs, that's roughly a month's worth of food. So if you think about it, that's only 4 minutes per day. I spent just over $50 on all the supplies and I only got through about 1/3 of it. That means in total I spent just over $16.50 per month. When you figure I used to spend about $9.00 a month on food just for Wolfey, and Lolly is bigger and eats more than Wolfey does, I'm actually saving money to make my own dog food, and it's a whole lot healthier for them.
Okay, I went into a lot more detail here than I planned on, but I think it's a lot of good information, so I'm not going to cut anything! To all you non-dog-food-chefs out there, I apologize for being so long winded, but for anyone who's considering doing this for their own furry kids, I hope this was helpful! And the moral of the story is...I'm so lucky to love a man who not only puts up with, but encourages me to continue spoiling my furry babies!
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