Cut my costs in half for the dog food recipe!

I'm pleased to share that after writing Lizzing Lightly's Homemade Dog Food Recipe I was motivated to buy the dog's kangaroo meat from a pet shop at half the price.

Freshly made dog food

It was only a ten minute drive each way and instead of paying $20.00 for 2kg I paid $22.00 for 4kg of kangaroo.  2kg was bought freshly cut and ready to cook.  2kg was purchased (also cut) frozen so I have put it in the freezer ready for when I need to make the next batch.

This is my first real changed behaviour from reviewing and sharing my day to day activities through Lizzing Lightly.  While it is not really a win for the environment I think it is worth celebrating as a win for my weekly budget :-)

The gorgeous pooches again - Zac and Chile

Thanks for reading and helping to motivate me to try and be as sustainable as I can be - I really hope some of my thoughts and ideas are motivating you too!

Lizzing Lightly

Lizzing Lightly's Homemade Dog Food Recipe

As mentioned in dog allergies and sustainable meat choices we choose to make our own dog food to reduce our pooches impact on the environment and give them good quality food.  Feel free to use and adapt this recipe for your own fur babies.  I would love to hear if they like it!

Ingredients:

4 tbsp olive oil
Leftover vegetables: try to include something green and some sweet potato or pumpkin but whatever you have in the house will often do.
2 x 375 g can of beans.  We usually use kidney beans but chickpeas, cannelloni or four bean mix is fine.
2 kg Kangaroo mince.  We buy human grade from the supermarket for convenience but the pet grade is sufficient and much cheaper.
2-3 cups of rice or pasta (or any filler you wish to use).  Add more if you want the mixture to go a bit further.
Approximately 8 cups of water (enough to just cover vegetables and meat in your saucepan)
Optional:
1 or 2 can(s) of tomatoes
2 tsp of vegetable stock or gravox

Method:

1. Roughly chop up leftover veggies to a size that you think is manageable for your dog.
2. Drain and rinse the cans of beans that you have selected.
3. Place your largest saucepan on a high heat.  Add the oil and allow to heat up, then add the kangaroo mince.  Fry the mince on a high heat, mixing regularly to break it up into smallish lumps.
4. After the meat is browned and cooked add veggies and stir through allowing heat to penetrate.
5. After the mixture is heated through add the water along with the stock or gravox if you want to add this (be careful not to add too much salt).  Then add the rinsed beans.  If you are adding canned tomatoes then do this at the same time as the beans.  Mix well.
6. Add the rice or pasta to the mix.  After the mixture begins to bubble reduce the heat so that it simmers away.
7. Cook for about half an hour, until liquid is absorbed and rice or pasta and veggies are cooked through, stirring occasionally so that the bottom doesn't stick and burn.  Leave to cool and then serve into plastic containers for putting into the fridge or freezing.

This recipe makes about 21 cups of dog food.

Each of our Jack Russells will eat a bowl of this (approximately 1.5 cups) each night.  So the two of them eat about 3 cups each night.  This means that the mixture makes enough for 7 nights.  However, it lasts longer (probably 2-3 weeks) for us since we also feed the dogs our leftovers and the occasional packet of free range chicken wings.  We always have dog biscuits in the house to tide us over when we run out between batches.

This recipe costs approximately $30 to make (we pay about $20 for the kangaroo meat alone) so that works out to about $4.30 per day as the sole food source for 1 week.  Buying pet grade meat would reduce the cost by about half. After looking at the savings I feel more motivated to go out of my way to buy pet grade meat!

Dog allergies and sustainable meat choices

Our eldest Jack Russell, Chile, has had skin allergies since she was a pup in Adelaide.  As part of the desensitisation process that we went through with her to stop her itching constantly (so badly that she pulled her own fur out in yucky patches) we had to limit her diet to low allergy foods for 6 to 8 weeks. This included leaner or gamier meats (goat, horse, donkey, kangaroo, venison and buffalo) with carbohydrate sources of sweet potato, pumpkin, lentils, barley and kidney beans.  For those of you who are struggling with itchy animals here is a link to some information that might be helpful.

Our gorgeous dogs- Chile is the on the right

For the international readers - yes, we do eat kangaroo in Australia!  But there are plenty of them and it is a good idea.  Kangaroo is a sustainable meat.  Kangaroo can not be farmed and so there are less impacts from land clearing and nutrient application.  When compared to traditionally farmed animals like cows the Kangaroo has less impact because it does not produce large quantities of methane as part of its digestive process.  Since methane is a big contributor to global warming it is important to reduce these emissions.

Unfortunately the low allergy diet didn't stop Chile itching but it did help us to realise how many bulking agents and additives tend to be in pet food.  We are not really strict about the dogs diets now but we try to make homemade food for them in big batches to freeze.  Another good reason to make homemade dog food is to try and reduce the dogs greenhouse footprint (or paw print!).

That is why we use kangaroo meat in our homemade dog food (recipe to come later this week!).  It is more sustainable and our dogs love it - I hope yours will too!