Pet food after the end

[ChefBourgeoisie]

??? People don't mow the lawn because it's fun they mow the lawn because it keeps the yard tidy and presentable. Unless you're making mulch for your garden there's no reason to harvest grass

It scratches their itch to harvest something. For 10,000 years their ancestors harvested, and that desire doesn't go away just because you live in a suburban environment. It turns out the harvest doesn't even to be useful, it can be this sort of symbolic ritual. The instinct is so powerful that starting in the 1970s or so they enlarged the law mowers and made them tractor-shaped (tiny though).

Centuries ago, such lawns were luxuries, as most sane people would either grow crops on it, or just let whatever grasses grow uncontrollably so that their livestock can eat it.

Sure, there is a separate impulse there... that of the rich to make land unproductive just to show how rich they are, and then to have workers who waste time manicuring it, just to show how rich they are. And no doubt there are more than a few mansions in Bel Air and places like that doing the same.

But few homeowners are choosing to have lawns. The person who built the home five sales ago chose that. The zoning board in 1964 chose that, or city council when they adopted this building code or that building code chose that. The person's choice, subconscious though it is, chooses to harvest a worthless crop because it scratches that itch. They could have astroturf or xeriscaping put down. They could hire a Mexican to mow it. They could just not mow it, and wait for the city to send a threatening letter. H. sapiens is an agricultural species, and for agricultural species farming is instinctive. Just look at leafcutter ants... they're not doing that because every generation they're making the conscious decision "hey, turns out we don't have any industry, our economy will fall apart if we stop growing fungus!"

 

[Cirrhosis_of_Liver]

I find this "lawn mowing instinct" pretty exceedingly unlikely, but it deserves its own "Debate User" thread.

Getting back on topic, cats do need taurine; it is an essential amino acid for them. To make sure cats get enough taurine, they really need to eat mostly, even exclusively meat. Dogs can eat omnivorously, though like humans they really do a lot better with a good amount of meat, but cats have heart failure from eating vegetarian diets. I should say "animal products." In America, we tend to only eat skeletal muscle, and consider the rest of the animal "trash." Eating exclusively skeletal muscle causes imbalances, especially with phosphorus-calcium. Preparing a complete nutrition for an animal with a substantially different diet from humans can be complicated.

I remember that feeding cats only fish also causes problems. They love it, but it's not something they can live off exclusively.

 

[ChefBourgeoisie]

Getting back on topic, cats do need taurine;

You make good points. For cats, we're looking at what, it needing to be 90% or so (non-exclusively fish) meat? That's what, something like up to 10oz per day? Call it 2/3rds of a pound.

We need 20lbs of food per month? You guys with cats will correct me no doubt, but keep in mind that's kibble. That's more than a chicken or two. How many are you keeping? How many would you be butchering for yourself every month? I don't think this gets easier if you choose a smaller bird either, I don't even want to bother to figure out how many quail that would be.

This might be more supportable if you had livestock, you'd have quite alot of organ meats like the others have said. Cattle's right out, none of us will be slaughtering more than one of those per year. Hogs maybe? All of us like bacon and ham, and it's easy even from a small herd to fatten up and slaughter multiple per year. I know what the retail cuts dress out to, but I don't think I've ever really heard what the organs and oddiments add up to. Maybe 25 pounds? Gut and skin you want to keep for yourself (sausage and pork rinds), rest is pretty marginal. How are you going to preserve it? Is this cooked and frozen for the cat? Does it need to be ground up? Aren't some cats picky as hell... I could hardly blame the animal if it turned its nose up at kidney meat.

You'll need to slaughter a good eight or even ten hogs per year. You'll add another half a day's prep time for each. Have to have spare paper or plastic to wrap the stuff in. Measured out in one day portions? And a very non-finicky cat.

Sheep might be about as good as hogs. But it's a bit trickier... two sows and a boar will easily give you a dozen for slaughter every year. Hell, that can be a single litter pretty often. Sheep only do twins or triplets. So you need a far bigger herd. Old ewes are nearly inedible for humans, so the full dress weight of those could go towards pets. But you only start getting those in a mature herd where they've aged out.

I don't envy anyone who thinks this is a problem that is imperative to solve. They've got their work cut out for them. Dogs (large ones anyway) just make the problem even bigger. And trying to make it a hunting problem rather than an animal husbandry problem doesn't change any of the numbers for the better.

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

If your cat can hunt then it can feed itself, usually. In fact that's the main benefit to having a cat, it'll keep pests out of your food storage. Now if you're bringing in a prissy kitty who's never caught anything but its own tail and couldn't find food if you stuffed its face in its food bowl, it's pretty much fucked cause I think there's some specific nutrients they need in particular (Don't quote me on that) but other than that cats are pretty self sufficient.

A lot of cats these days are lazy retards that would starve death if not fed by their owners

 

[Dr. Ricearoni]

A lot of cats these days are lazy retards that would starve death if not fed by their owners

That's the problem, really. An unfortunate reality of having pets after the end is that unless they can work for you they're more burden than what they're worth. This is, after all, an after the end scenario, and while a pet can be a valuable, rewarding thing in polite society, polite society tends to not exist in such an occasion.

 

[Näkki]

The veggies are the sticking point for me. Meat is pretty simple but there's lots of vegetables variants and some are toxic for dogs. I know potatoes, yams and rice are popular fillings in dog food, but are there more that are either popular food for humans or something that grows in the wild that humans can't eat? Also what about fruit?

Anything above toy dogs have its usage as long as you didn't raise it badly. Even if you wanna larp as full on survivor you'd rather take a dog with you than go alone or drag your kids along.

It's actually easier to list what they can't eat. It's hard to find out these days. Even nightshade like tomatoes is perfectly fine if cooked or ripe and/or in small quantities. Except in some cases, it depends. Garlic cloves might not be great, but just a bit with every meal keeps ticks and fleas away and is good too.

Definitely not recommended:
Alcohol, avocados, cooked or heated bones (they splinter more easily, raw bones are fine), any form of coffee beans etc, chocolate, citrus fruit (again, a few pieces of mandarin are healthy), too much oil of any kind, stone fruit (bc of the seeds, just take them out), everything allium (garlic, chives, etc. Garlic is fine in small quantities and can motivate dogs to eat, keeps small pests away), grapes (raisins, etc. Do keep away), deadly mushrooms (duh, others are fine but not needed), macadamia nuts, salt, sugar, xylitol, raw potatoes, anything that could kill you

Maybe not everything raw and too much of, theres certainly more about raw and cooked, but the later barely gives issues. Here we do a lot of pumpkins, (seeds are great too for oil or the chickens etc), cucumbers as snacks in summer, or to make them get more fluids, they steal the blackberries and currant by themselves, watermelon, certain beans when cooked, potatoes, sweetpotatoes (both cooked), broccoli, and so on. Whatever we got outside in the garden basically.

Variety as with ourselves is important, fruit and veg, can even reduce to 15-10% when working dog, but just don't forget minerals and vitamins.


And yes cats need taurine. But you they get that from meat, fish and from liver and heart, technically it's in all meat. Poultry is a good source. Compared to dogs you can't keep them on insect or vegetarian diets when it comes down to it though.


Also how did this thread devolve into a "keep pets" vs "abandon your pets" when it's about "how to feed your pet".
Go be edgy somewhere else, that wasn't the question.

 

[Cirrhosis_of_Liver]

Thoroughly cooked bones, such as have been stewed, barbecued, or grilled, or otherwise reached temperatures above 160 F for a long time, are much weaker and prone to splintering.

However, to kill virtually all parasites, you really only need to reach much lower temps at which bone isn't breaking down very quickly at all, and it doesn't take very long.

So it occurs to me there's probably a good way to make bones good for dogs to chew both on choking and parasite levels.