Feeding garbage - Page 1

Someone on another thread just made a reference to "feeding garbage", and I wanted to take the opportunity to write a bit on this topic, because it may be helpful to others.

These are increasingly tough times for many people, and a lot of pets are being dumped in shelters by owners who say they cannot afford to feed them. This is completely unnecessary, in many cases. We may have all the food our own pets need, being thrown out in the trash every week.

Most households throw out a surprising amount of food each month. Much of this can be converted to good, nutritious pet food, and save the owner a lot of money, as well as the lives of many pets.. if it is used properly.

Let's put aside some of the snobbery, now. If you can afford to feed the best dog food, then consider yourself fortunate. The fact remains, however, that until about fifty years ago in the USA, commercial dog food was not commonly fed. Before that, it was hardly available, at all! Dogs have been nourished on refuse and scraps since the time of their earliest relationship with man. One theory says that out dogs' ancestors made their first acquaintences with humans when scavenging from garbage dumps.

At any rate, a dog's stomach and digestive system is very different than that of a  human, and they can or cannot eat various foods which we would or would not eat, based on those differences.

The first notable difference is the lack of chewing molars, and saliva which is specialiized to break down carbohydrates into sugars. Humans have these characteristics, so we can utilize starchy roots, grains and vegetables better. Plant cell walls are very tough and must be mechanically crushed by chewing or pulverizing, or broken down with heat. Once the plant cell wall is broken down, dogs can also utilize the cell contents. Thus, dogs can benefit from diets which include grains, plant matter, and root starches, IF they are precooked.

As a trade off, a dog's teeth are perfectly designed for chewing and breaking flesh and bone, and the saliva is designed to begin the breakdown of proteins by means of special enzymes, which we do not have. These enzymes (as well as the dog's strong digestive juices) can also break down and neutralize a certain amount of bacteria and bacterial toxins which may be present in the food.. SOME, but not all!!!!

Dogs can suffer digestive upsets. Most will result in a loose, foul-smelling stool. Some may be fatal. This would depend on variables having to do with the kind of bacterial contamination, the degree of decomposition or contamination, and the age, condition, and relative immunity of the dog to those particular bacteria. Older or younger dogs may lack the necessary digestive juices and / or immune development to deal with food, gone bad. But basically, the dog is designed to be a scavenger and carrion eater, as well as a hunter. 
 
More..

My dogs, young and old, suffer digestive upsets EVERY time they get table scraps........and I suffer through the clean up.

I think we've all been grossed out from time to time by dogs' eating habits. Stool eating is common, but dogs seldom have access to anything in the way of rotted food. I have seen a dog lap up a bowl of fish guts and heads, rotted in the hot sun for a week or two, and suffer no ill effects. The dog got into the garden and ate what was supposed to be liquid fertilizer, and judging by the way it ate it, it was absolutely delicious!!! In fact, the ancient Romans made wide use of a fermented fish sauce called, "garum".

And, humans have been eating rotted / fermented foods for millenia.. food of all kinds, including meat! The native people of Alaska used to make a delicacy from a rotted goose, allowed to freeze and thaw in about six cycles, in it's own skin. SO, even humans can eat fermented foods, but only if the bacteria active in the process are "friendly", and the process and product somehow controlled or tested. The result would be something similar to cheese. The idea is that by controlling the process, you can cultivate a friendly bacteria which will fend off toxic bacteria, and create a delicacy which is safe to eat.

But, fermentation processes cannot be properly controlled by most people in most environments, and they take rather long times and specialized equipment, anyway. A faster way to convert "garbage" into useful food for our pets is with the use of long cooking and heat. This can be done easily at home with a slow cooker (crock pot) or a pressure cooker. The addition of a modest amount of ordinary vinegar will really help the process along. Vinegar, being an acid, will break down poultry bones and it is also an excellent disinfectant and anti-bacterial / bacteriostatic agent... which is why you can leave your relish, catsup, and mustard and mayonaisse out on the counter. Refrigeration will help to keep the product fresh, but the vinegar is what keeps it safe to eat. Ever wonder why you see pickled eggs and pig's feet out at room temperature on the deli counter? Vinegar!

So, if heat breaks down plant walls, and makes the cell contents available to our dogs, we can also put in old greens and salad fixin's which we may no longer find palatable. I would not go so far as to use greens which are actually slimy or producing gasses, but the not-quite-fresh stuff which most of us would toss in the trash could be a nutritional supplement for our dogs. Certainly, you can throw in pasta, rice, potatoes, as well as old meat. And, if you use vinegar and cook for two days in a crock pot, you can make a nutritious soup stock and even mineral rich snacks from chicken bones, even turkey bones! Let the product cool a bit and test.. You should be easily able to break the bones in your fingers before feeding. Since about half of a whole, undressed chicken is what we would consider "waste", there is a LOT of food here! If you have any impulse to be respectful of the life / value of the chicken, or the cost to our environment, you should think about this form of recycling, for your own home. It's thrifty, nutritious, environmentally responsible, and you dogs will love it.

I should also mention that the Europeans have been using a stock pot on the back of the home stove or hearth for a very long time. Food was scarce at time, people were poor, and there was no refrigeration. In fact, this may be where the practice of cooking with wine and wine vinegar came from. Food prepared in this way produced a nutritious stock, which would be kept going indefinitely.. every day, something would be taken out, and something new put in. I first learned about this from a well known local chef who called himself, "Chef Pierro". His mother was a personal chef for the King of Spain, before him, and his daughter was also a well appointed chef. Chef Pierro had his own restaurant and radio show, and he spoke on the topic of saving "lost foods", including meat. Most people would never think it is possible, but it absoluely is! And, it is no doubt much safer than the popular trend for feeding "BARF" (Bones and Raw Foods). My fear with raw foods is that there may be a bacterial contamination which the dog cannot handle. E.Coli and Salmonella are very real risks in uncooked foods, and can definitely affect dogs. Bacterial toxins can be so aggressive as to impair the smooth muscle contractions in the gut, and possibly set the dog up for necrosis of the intestine (large sections of gut can die). Untreated and undiagnosed, the outcome could be death.

I have never had a dog turn down or suffer ill effects from eating welll cooked "lost" food. I've even taken a fairly putrid deboned turkey carcass which had sat for four days, and cooked it will with liberal amounts of vinegar, and it smelled nasty for the first two days, but the dogs loved it. One of my dogs has a clear visual shot at the outdoor crock pot, and he knows when I'm cooking down food for them. He looks at the crock pot and then looks at me, repeatedly, showing me his interest and anticipation!

So, what did people and dogs do, before the invention of refrigeration, grocery and pet stores, and canned / dry dog food? Think about it!!!!

SitasMom...

  But, do you really cook it down? That makes all the difference.

Gelatin dessert, such as "Jell-O" and Royal brand, are made from the rotted hides of cattle. Look at the result. What is more pristine and lovely, than a sparkling, jiggling cube of Jell-O?

Your dogs are probably already eating lost food. Protein powders and meat by products which are recovered from all sorts of avenues in commerce are combined to make dry pet food, especially. The most nasty, rotted, foul and disgusting things (meat waste products) can be stored in barrels in the hot sun, and come out pure as the driven snow, when they are run through a process in a commercial boiler. There are companies which do just this.

Unfortunately, some pet food manufacturers also used imported protein powders from China a few years back, sold through a huge Canadian conglomerate. Those "protein" powders contained melamine.. a plastic / coal industry by product which tested like organic protein in gas spectographic tests commonly used to analyze protein content. The result was crystaluria and resultant kidney scarring and damage in tens of thousands of pets in the USA.

When you prepare your own dog food from lost human food, this cannot happen.

Dry dog foods are a convenience item. I cannot imagine doing this every day for a lot of dogs. But, it could be possible, in a pinch, if you could source enough raw materials from local restaurants and neighbors. For one or two dogs, it just makes good sense to me.

SitasMom, sounds like you have some testy tummies. Only one of mine is like that, gets the squirts if I give him an egg on his kibble, change from chicken to lamb (even when it is the same kibble). Oh well he lives outside and I just hose it away. Be interesting to do the crockpot thing. Of course the dogs would have to have their own out in the garage, it sounds stinky.
Not right now, but maybe in the future. Not enough waste here with just 2 peeps who are hardly home to cook.

The things I've seen dogs eat !!!!!!!
Mine do ok on almost anything, I don't think they would get sick eating road kill.
Least of all table scraps.
Avoid spice and grease.

I don't throw anything away I give it to my dogs. One of my dog is walking garbage truck her stomach never get upset so before I throw away anything I give it to her first and see if she wants it. (most of the time she does) On the other hand my other female dose not like changes in her diets so I just feed her the same thing over and over, but if I have some raw meat and bones she never refuses those. Scraps etc are a good source of energy for dogs I would not have a problem feeding it to any of my dogs. Dogs are oportunistic animals, in past they eat what they could get, and they survived. No money for food it's just poore excuse to give away your dog especially in a country where so much food get wasted every day.