Tag Archives: pet

Feed your pets for less

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When I was in my early teens, times were pretty tough in my family. Neither of my folks were able to work full time for different reasons. At that time we owned two large dogs, one German Sheppard, and one Lab cross. They ate a lot of food and there was not a lot of extra money to buy food for them. It was getting financially close to having to find homes for them.

I helped feed our dogs for a couple of years on rough fish. We were fortunate as we had a stream close by that was over run with rough fish. The fish were mostly suckers, and chubs, but there were a lot of them. In the summer months I would go down to the stream every couple of days and fill a bread bag or two with fish.

When I caught enough fish, I took them home and put them in a coffee can or two on the stove. I then added water and brought them to a slow boil. I would boil the mixture until the fish had fallen apart, and all that was left was a fish stew of sorts.

Once the soupy fish stock cooled down enough the dogs had a banquet they would gulp down rather quickly. In the fall and winter, there were small animals that could be hunted that the dogs could eat. Usually animals that were considered pest animals were easy to find. Of course the occasional rabbit may have fallen into the mix.

There were never enough fish or small animals that the dogs could live off of what I provided, but between what I caught or scrounged up, and the scraps and dog food they were given, they did not know things were tough in the house. They may have not been as full as they would have liked, but we managed to keep them through the hard times.

If you are fortunate enough to live near a body of fresh water, odds are that it has an abundance of rough fish. Generally Carp are everywhere, but sometimes there are other rough fish that you can catch an almost unlimited supply of. Of course there is always the possibility that you will catch a fish you would like to eat too.

It is hard to pretend that these are the good times, and I read or hear daily of another family forced to part with their pets. If you have a river or lake close by, and are willing to spend some spare time fishing, you can feed your pets for free, or at least spend less for their food. You do not need to invest a lot of money, and one day of fishing a week may keep your dog or cat in food for a long time, saving you money in the process. Food for thought any way, no pun intended, smile….

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Millions of pounds of potential pet food composted?

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I was at a pet store buying yet another weeks worth of cat food at $.60 cents a can, or $.30 cents per day for each cat when I had a thought. I was watching television a few weeks ago and something came on about the number of deer killed on Illinois highways was about ten thousand deer a year! According to the show, the state of Illinois composts the dead deer as it the cheapest way to safely dispose of the dead deer.

And I am in a pet store paying $.60 cents a can for cat food made from venison because it is cheap compared to other flavors, and the cat’s like it! I did a Google search on the words, ‘dead deer landfill’, and the probable national numbers of government disposed dead deer are mind boggling by any stretch of the imagination. Of course as things go I could not find anything worthwhile on that search for Illinois, but I found some numbers for the states of Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. The rest of the country’s daily deer kill can be imagined from those numbers.

One insurance company referenced, estimates about 101,000 deer are killed each year in the states of Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York! There is a problem with wasting disease in some states around the United States, so cutting the numbers I found in half, that still is over 50,000 dead deer that could be used for cat and dog food.

I started wondering why those animals are not turned into pet food? Why is there canned cat and dog food in pet stores all starting at $.50 or higher a can, and a titanic number of pounds of deer meat that could be made into pet food just wasted? Some areas and states are paying high fees to have deer carcasses disposed of because there are too many dead deer to go into landfills.

Guessing that the usable meat on average from even those 50K dead deer is 50 pounds an animal, that works out to 2,500,000 pounds of possible high protein pet food thrown away in those three mentioned states alone! I ran it across my little calculator twice, because that is such an amazing number, an estimated two million five hundred thousand pounds of deer meat wasted each year in just three states. Wow!

The can size I buy for $.60 is six ounces, but for the sake of simple math, let’s pretend it is five ounces. That comes out to roughly 833,000 cans of cat food. 833,000 cans of cat food at sixty cents a can comes out to just short of a cool half million dollars! There has to be some sort of profit in there somehow? That is just from three states! Once that figure goes across the major deer road kill states in the United States…well you get the idea.

The same idea can be applied to the more distasteful animal killings in the world. If we are legally killing a species of animal just for its fur, or some other part of it, why can’t they be transformed into pet food? At least they would not go to waste completely. I am not advocating the killing of any animals only for their fur, but it happens, and we should make the most of it we can.

Here in the Southwest, there are companies that buy used cows (dead cattle) from stockyards and holding pens. They manage to make a profit and they are paying for a cow carcass that is no longer useful for human consumption. I sure am not an expert on business, and I am not sure my math is all that good either, but the concept is there, and I am sure someone could figure out how to make a profit at it?

It sure does seem like there is some money in road kill deer pet food for someone where a pet food cannery exists? Or maybe I don’t have a clue, let me know?

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