The Kibble Trials: Fromm Surf & Turf: Results

Conker was on the Surf & Turf for roughly 20 days or so. When I asked about it, Fromm sent me the complete nutrient analysis for this (and other) foods they make. This was nice, since every other company I have contacted about it (who does not have it openly available online) has either blown me off or come up with some dumbass reason not to give it to me.
So it gets bonus points for that.

Slightly edited cellular phone picture

Conker did pretty good on this food. He developed a slight doggish smell, but it wasn't as bad as some of the other kibbles. He got a few eye bogies but not enough to actually count. His teeth stayed pretty clean, which was a bit surprising.

The kibbles were quite small and relatively uniform with some variance. That's fine for Conker though, he chews kibble pretty well.

I did not try out any of the canned varieties.

I really liked this kibble. I didn't think I would due to it's lower protien content, but Conker did pretty okay on it for me not to care much about that. Normally he does not do so good on foods with carbs that make up more than 20% of the energy. This one must be an exception.
Conker digested it quite well with no assistance from pre or probiotics, which is always a good thing. And it's relatively inexpensive for a higher-quality food. Though I don't really like to, I might include the Fromm kibbles in Conker's food rotation if it turns out to be financially feasible.

Well, I didn't exactly splurge like I thought I was going to while in Medford. I suddenly got really conscious about the $20 bill in my wallet (I also had a $10) and didn't really want to spend or break it, so I kept my purchase under $10. I know I'll spend it sooner or later, though. There is always something Conker-related that needs purchasing.

I bought a tube of green tripe, and some venison liver for about $7.75. Not too bad, especially since I can't get either here in GP.  The checkout guy gave me two samples each of the turkey, beef, and veggie mix Sojos foods and one of a kibble called PureVita that I've never heard of before.
I did pop into Winco to look around but nothing really caught my eye this time.

You know how I often say that I'd like a meat grinder?

Well, I don't have one yet. But I did discover that you can "grind" meat in a cuisinart! (a.k.a. food processor) No bone-in items though, since the cuisinart is not mine, and if I break it with something like that Mom would get very very angry. Which kinda keeps the actual reason why I wanted to use a grinder still floating out there somewhere.

Anywho, this is my adventure in cuisinart meat mincing.


First, you need a cuisinart. Or other similar food processor. Mine is a Prep Plus 11 (no idea what year) with a 3/4 horsepower motor. That's plenty of power to mince that meat up quite nicely.
Next, you need some meat. I do not know the exact weights on some items, but I do know that I minced up four beef hearts equaling about 6.3 pounds. All the beef heart fit into one gallon ziplock after mincing. In total I think I turned over 20 pounds of meat into mince.
A good sharp knife, large cutting board, and several bowls are also handy to have.

Start by chopping your meat into minceable size. 1 inch chunks or smaller works good, and try to get them about the same size or they will mince unevenly. I put the chopped meat into a bowl to await mincing so I had a ready supply.
Note: Partially frozen meat works best. Thawed meat sticks together in a ball after a few seconds, while frozen meat stays separate and "fluffy". Totally frozen meat won't mince completely and will make a lot of noise and possibly break your cuisinart (or whatever you're using).

Next, dump some chopped meat into your cuisinart. I filled it about 1/3rd full to ensure even mincing. More than that and it shakes a lot and doesn't mince. Less and it shakes a lot and tends to stay in one bunch and not mince.

Mince the meat.

See that handle? Hang onto that, or the cuisinart will dance across your counter in a slightly frightening manner and threaten to fall off and smash your foot.
I just let the thing run for a few seconds then use the pulse button to get all the larger bits hanging near the top minced. Some bits will be smaller or larger, and that is basically unavoidable unless you spend forever trying to get exact consistency.

Once you are satisfied with the consistency of your minced meat, dump it into another holding bowl or into the container/bag you will store it in. Pick out any large chunks and put them back into the cuisinart to be minced with the next batch.

The meat, depending on what it actually is, will be nice and fluffy. Odd word to describe a decimated part of a dead animal, but that's what it seemed like to me. There will be a lot of air in the mince and will take up a lot of space if you don't squash it down. If you are refreezing the mince, I suggest packing it as tightly as possible to get more into your container, and reduce the total amount of air that could damage the meat, and save space in your freezer.

This is the meat I minced.

From bottom to top: Pork shoulder (high fat, as evidenced by the numerous white flecks), beef heart (very dense and little fat), beef meat (less fat that I normally have), chicken breast (skinless, so not much fat), pork fat (LOADS of fat!), and thymus (I have no idea, I've never had this before).
Pre-mincing, this took up about 1/4 of the room in my freezer. Post-mincing, it fits in about 2/3rds of that 1/4 space, leaving me a nice chunk of now vacant freezer to fill with something else.

Before you ask about the pork fat, I have it for a reason. The beef heart and chicken breast have very little fat in them. Fat is where Conker gets a very good chunk of energy from and is vitally important to his health in many ways. So whenever he gets a large amount of meat with very little fat in it, I add a hunk of pork fat to bring the levels back up to what he does best on.
The minced pork shoulder has an almost perfect ratio of fat to protien for Conker.

If I'd had a meat grinder, like I'd wanted from the beginning, those dang chicken backs taking up another 1/4+ of freezer space could be reduced to less than 1/4. But no, a meat grinder still eludes me, much to my annoyance. I bet the thrift store workers around here wonder why I come in nearly every day but never buy anything.

Hahaha, haha, ha...

I am so bad at following up with this statement: "I am going to try to make this month a raw-only month"

So far this month I have bought:
Several pounds of chicken backs
Several pounds of beef heart
A bit of turkey (and bits!)
Many cans of canned sealife (seadead?)

AND

A bag of Fromm kibble.
Wait, Fromm? Aren't I trying one of those out right now? Well, yes, I am. But when I went in Medford recently the petshop had Fromm's Four-Star Beef Frittata Veg in stock, and since I can't find that here in GP, I bought it. For $13.

I'm going back to Medford on Monday for a reason that will not be disclosed yet (maybe on Monday), and will be stopping at Winco again, and probably that petshop to get some tripe if they have it in stock. I've never tried it before and am curious as to what Conker would do when presented with it. 
Which will make the "raw-only" month cost a lot since I don't really normally buy that much foodstuffs in a relatively short span of time. And, due to the bag of Fromm, it's not a raw-only month anymore. And for the heck of it, I might buy a bag of EVO too, since they are currently on sale for $17 instead of $20.

Which would make the food bill this month quite astronomical. But I wouldn't have to buy anything else for a long long time. Since I'd have so much dog food laying around, taking up space.

Observations

I've noticed that whenever Conker eats a commercial food for longer than two weeks, he gets a bit mushy, then loses weight. The first thing to go is his muscle tone, so I guess that's why he seems a bit squish. Then the squish begins to go away and he has a hard time keeping weight on.
Normally Conker would be getting about 1.5 cups of kibble for maintenance, according to several sources. However, 1.5 cups for maintenance is not enough, so I upped it to two. Still not as good, slightly better, but he still can't quite keep the good weight on. Or eat it all.

I wonder if this is because on his homemade diet he gets around 850 calories a day (both grain and meat meals), compared to an average of 410 (per 1 cup) on kibbles. Or is it that because of the energy ratios? (Or better yet, is it because one is fresh and the other highly processed? But I'll leave this discussion out for now.) I have noticed that the more carbs there are in the food, the worse Conker's condition gets. But if I eliminate carbs completely, he can't keep good weight on either, so carbs are necessary for him, but in what amount?
Conker's homemade diet is roughly 35% protien, 50% fat, and 15% carbs. That seems to work out great for him. Kibbles tend to be higher in carbs, and I wonder if it's that, or the lower caloric content to nutrient content level.

However, when I bump up his kibble ration, he is still in a somewhat mushy condition and in order to match the calories, I'd be overdosing him on almost all nutrients, sometimes up to double his daily needs. Kibble is very nutrient dense, not not energy dense, when compared to his homemade food.
But when I feed him more than a cup and a half, he often won't finish it all, so I've got to split it into two meals. No biggie, since I do that already with his homemade food, but even then he often doesn't want to finish it so he stays in a less-than-ideal condition.


Another thing is that Conker is growing more and more intolerant of other dogs. Usually rude or larger dogs, and it's becoming quite obnoxious. I guess he is maturing into a "true" Shiba now, and his dog-park time will be cut because of it. If he cannot get along with the other dogs, he's not gonna go. But if they are relatively the same size (give or take a few pounds) or polite dogs, he gets along with them fine.

Is Conker Gluten-Free?

Short answer: No.
Long answer: I have had quite a few people ask me if Conker is gluten intolerant/free. No, to both of those. They often ask when I mention his wheat intolerance, since I guess a "big" health thing right now is going gluten-free. How do I know he is not gluten intolerant? Because he does not react badly to oats, rye, or barley, all of which contain... You guessed it, gluten!
That problem appears to only pertain to wheat, not gluten-inclusive grains. Thankfully, I might add.

Anyways, this got me thinking about something. If Conker were gluten intolerant and couldn't eat oats, where would I be? Up by only about $0.20 per meal, if I used quinoa. If I used amaranth I'd be down about $0.05. Wait, down? Yep! Though more expensive per pound than oats, amaranth is PACKED with nutrients so I would need to use about half as much of it to get what I needed.
Now, that isn't a very mid decrease in price, but that makes purchasing amaranth for Conker and using frequently worth doing. And since I already buy a lot of it for me (I like to pop it like popcorn then mix it with honey and carob. DELICIOUS) adding more to the bag for Conker wouldn't be much of an issue.

Millet is another gluten-free grain. It tastes surprisingly good both raw and cooked, if you are into grains like that. Millet is even cheaper than amaranth per pound and is nutrient dense as well.
However, I don't know if Nutritiondata is glitching here or what, but I cannot for the life of me get the cooked and uncooked nutrient levels to line up (there will be some variance, as nutrients are both lost and gained during cooking, so they will never be exact) and in order to get Conker his daily requirement of magnesium and manganese, I would need to feed him over a cup and a half millet to achieve that. And compared to a cup of oats, cup of quinoa, or half cup of amaranth, that seems a bit excessive. This is where I am a bit wierded out, since that does not happen with the other two gluten-free grains which have similar nutrient levels as millet.
So, for now, millet is just an occasional meal item until I can figure out what it's deal is.

Rice is considered gluten-free, but I rarely use it due to Conker refusing to eat it (haven't tested this recently) and it's magnesium/manganese ratio. I prefer not to have a ton of excess manganese, which happens if I use rice. I am paranoid about the correct balance of things and this just throws me off. But I''ll probably use it more often when I figure out how to remedy that.


Anywho, I'll be writing a bit more about the new grains in Conker's homemade diet once I am finished with this most recent bag of kibble. Should be in about a week or so.

Things in Medford

Conker and I went on a bit of a lame adventure today. We drove down to Medford (which is not that amazing) to check out a pet supply store that supposedly carries good brands. I went there to see if they had any By Nature dog kibble, since they are having a free bag rebate until the 10th, but they, nor the shop I tried yesterday, had any of the dog kibble in stock. So... Yeah, that didn't make me too happy.
But the shop had a very good selection of foods and gear. The foods all had great prices, the gear? Not so great. Conker was less than thrilled to be there once people started asking me questions about him, but warmed up a bit when they broke out the freeze dried treats.

I have been trying to find a Ruff Wear retailer for some time now so I could try a Singletrak pack on Conker. I knew it would be a bit big, since they don't make it in XS and the Small Web Master is too big on Conker. But the Singletrak is made ever so slightly different than the regular Webmaster, and that slight difference made it so that it barely fit him! I am very happy about this, since if I got one I could use it with all three dogs. For Juneau and Sasha it would just be a sort of daypack thing, like Conker's Urban Adventure pack but less floppy. For Conker it would be very similar to his current Ruff Wear pack but not have detachable bags and sit closer to his body so it would be less bulky.
I do plan on getting him a newer Approach eventually, but for now his current setup works just fine.

After our little visit to the pet shop (which I plan on visiting again in the future) I hopped over to Winco, a wholesale store kinda like Costco but no membership is required and it's a hellova lot cheaper. I was quite pleased with the prices of canned fish and mollusks, so I grabbed some (no oysters, which is what I really wanted) which turned out to be about 1/3rd of what they are in GP. Then I spotted the beef heart. There was a lot of it, and if I'd had the freezer space, I would have grabbed all of them. But I didn't so I only got four.

Another terrible cellular phone picture.

The price for the four beefhearts? $10.64 at only $1.68 a pound! That is an astronomically low price compared to what I've paid in the past for beef heart. I will go on another trip sown to Medford for whenever I run low on meatstuffs or someone else goes to grab some more of that nice low-priced beef heart.

The Shiba wants some millet

Terrible. Blame it on the cell phone's camera.

He sat there, staring, with the same expression for minutes, as I enjoyed my freshly cooked millet. (Yes, millet, birdseed.) He was less than thrilled when I set the pot of mostly eaten millet on the ground before him. He must have thought it was something better, like quinoa, or oats. Two of his favorite grains.
But alas, it was not but a pot with a few sticky millet grains in it. He did eat them, but not as happily as he does quinoa or oats. He hasn't had a good oat meal in over two weeks! And the last time he had quinoa? Over three weeks ago! Poor, poor deprived Shiba. Who eats better than I do. But not by much.

In other news...
Holy mackerel, it hailed today! It was intense but short, and Mom and I ran out in the beginning of it to save our plants. Her flowers, my vegetables. None of my veggies were harmed by the short deluge of sky ice, but I can tell they didn't enjoy it.
Speaking of veggies...
I am, for the first time in like, forever, doing a somewhat decent job of taking care of some plants! I usually kill them within the first few weeks of their existence. So this is pretty cool.

I bought some chicken

I keep forgetting that the Ray's which is not close to me but still within like, 3 miles, has a MUCH better selection of meat-things that are perfect for dog stuff. Today I went to a nursery (to buy a pot, but didn't) and on the way home stopped at Safeway, and found no good deals on chicken (which I need for bones) so I went to the Ray's across the street to see what they had. Now, Ray's is not normally too incredibly cheap, they are usually slightly higher priced than the big box stores. Ray's is small, only in Oregon and Northern California, and they often carry local products and have a lot of badass foodstuffs so I like to shop there anyways.
Sooo, I go in, and am looking over the meats, and spot this package of chicken. I instantly knew what it was, a package of backs and necks, perfect for what I need. Then I look at the price. $0.59 per pound. Okay, for GP, that's a GREAT price for chicken frames and whatnot. (Remember, I am in Oregon, and don't get sales tax.) So I get a bag and stick the chicken package in and underneath it is ANOTHER ONE! And another, and another, and one more way up in the back. So I bag all five of them then spot the little package is turkey backs and organs for $0.99 a pound and bag that as well.

18.5 pounds of chicken, 1.35 pounds of turnkeyness

I get odd looks at the checkout counter, and I can tell the lady is going to ask. "What do you do with all these?" I tell her I make dog food, because my dog is dumb has food intolerances. She understood, and the lady behind me knew someone who also made dog food instead of buying it blah blah blah... They looked a bit startled when I told them he eats it raw. I love doing that.


I bring my meats home and stash them in the freezer. Now there is no space, and Mom has yet to take a look in there and see my most recent meat plunder.

Money spent in May

Wow, it's June already! The year is half over! That's crazy. You can see the writeup for April here.

This month was a food n' treats only month. I didn't spend too much, but due to a kibble purchase that drove the total up a bit higher than what it had been if I'd only bought a bag of chicken like I wanted to. But Conker being Conker, who is in a picky state right now, wouldn't allow that, so I had to buy the commercial food instead. Oh well.


May 2012

• Food: $23.75
• Treats/Chews: $10

Total:  $33.75

May was a lot less than the cost of April, which is nice.


Food.
Lets see here. I bought some lamb organs at a farmer's market in Washington for about $7.50, and a bag of kibble for $16.25. That covers the food.

Treats/Chews.
I also got a bunch of treats at the GP farmer's market for $5 and some at MPM for $5 so that accounts for that part of the cost.

Not much at all, really, but if I'd bought the chicken instead of kibble it would have been $10 less. Thanks for being a jerk, Conker.
After this bag of kibble is gone I'm going to make Conker suck it up and eat his food. I'm going to try to make it a raw-only month to see what the cost of one of those is compared to a kibble month, or something like that.