As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've been moving away from kibble with my dogs. This started off because I was interested to see if it had any effect on Willow's anxiety. It's hard to say, but I believe it has had some positive impact, and feeding a fresh food diet certainly isn't going to hurt, in any event. Here's where my question comes in. It's pretty expensive feeding all the dogs food from the supermarket (there are no raw suppliers where I live), so I'm wondering about supplementing this. We're off to Spain soon and we have lots of land and lots of critters! When the hunting season starts, I thought I could trap (in humane traps) the odd rabbit for them, but before that, my mind started wandering and thinking about the other options. Mice, rats, dormice... I remember seeing a TV show with Heston Blumenthal where he cooked dormouse for people; apparently it used to be a delicacy! They're abundant and I'm sure a good source of protein. We're in the middle of nowhere, so I don't think I'd have to worry about poisoning, contamination and the like. You can't get much more local than your own land, and what provenance! Any thoughts/advice?
I'll ask Ripple - he's into unusual protein sources (sorry no help at all - interesting subject though).
Honey roasted dormouse was Roman favourite. You would have to make sure that anything they eat was not diseased too,. I know that mice can pass on certain diseases to cats when they eat them. Forget which. Grasshoppers are full of protein and crunchy too why stop at mammals
Would you have enough time to get enough for 3 ,dogs? Would you be able to access food all year round? Could you humanely kill any thing ? Are they any hunters who would sell you meat? Could you maintain 3 dogs that way? Have you got storage areas? Or will you go out catch kill and feed? If so what happens if you don't catch.? It's such a lot to think about and plan, labrador hunter gatherer?
Oban eats kangaroo kibble and I can buy ground kangaroo at two butcher shops near me. Not cheap though. Oban's Vet would like us to go back to raw, she is an enthusiastic supporter of a BARF diet. We are slowly trying, one new (re-new as we were raw before) protein and carb, veg at a time.
What do the hunters shoot in Spain , Fiona, and do they shoot for fun or to use as their own food source?
What is a humane trap??? You mean a live trap??? And then what... I've been watching the big, fat, greedy pigeons in my garden, eating all the bird food I put out for the small birds, and I must admit the thought of pigeon pie crossed my mind more than once... Then to my horror a huge great skulking RAT came out and ran up the bird food table pole (a metal pole, by the way, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it), and sat on the bird table stuffing his face!!! I would have been thrilled to feed him to the dogs... Seriously though, apart from whether mice and rats carry worms etc, I'm not sure you'd be able to catch enough to make it worth feeding to the dogs. You'd have to find a way of supplementing that... Or were the rodents just going to be a little hors d'oeuvre???
If you kept hens, you’d have a nice source of eggs. Ducks, too. And you’d have a free gardening service - they’d eat all the worms.
Sorry, I've been very busy today, still busy so will get to a couple of questions... They shoot rabbits, birds, wild boar, deer... pretty much anything they can Yes, they eat their kill. Yummy! And then ... it gets dispatched I could do that, and then feed the hens to the dogs when we leave Spain for the winter I don't know if the dogs would appreciate the pickling, but, hey, they are Labradors after all!
Hi @snowbunny. I'd really worry for sure about rats and pigeons, thought of, at least in Portugal, to be plagued with disease, and hence as disease carriers.
