SPCA-LA spay/neuter clinic celebrates 1 year in operation!
This month, the Center celebrates our first year of providing quality, affordable spay/neuter services, vaccines and microchips to dogs, cats and rabbits. And, we’d like to give YOU a present – a SHOT for a SNIP!
When you refer a friend, family member, colleague or anyone else you know to the Center and they have their pet spayed/neutered, you will receive the next rabies vaccine for your pet for FREE! Help us improve the health of pets across Los Angeles. Click here for details.
You can feel confident trusting your pets to our veterinarians who will provide state-of-the-art and breed-specific anesthesia; innovative pain prevention and management; and spay/neuter expertise. To schedule your appointment, call (323) 730-5303 or emailspayneuter@spcaLA.com.
This is a wonderful service offered by spcaLA. They offer low-cost spay/neutering as well as vaccines, microchipping, and testing for heartworm (and FIV for cats), as well as financial assistance for those who otherwise could not afford to pay for such services. All the people who work there are wonderful and seem to truly care about the animals they treat, in addition to being very knowledgable and experienced.
Sam Baere 1800watt meat grinder
SB-500
So I had to replace my Waring Pro meat grinder. It’s demise was not brought about by grinding bones, but rather a stupid kitchen accident that was my fault. I was hoping to fix it, but that proved more expensive than what I actually paid for it, so I decided to spend less money and get a new grinder. I looked at several including ones from Tasin and Northern Tools (both have excellent reviews from raw feeders). It seems the Tasin, Norther Tools, and Sam Baere are basically the same in spec’s, reviews from fellow raw feeders, and are very close in price.
I decided on the Sam Baere since I got a good deal on it, and free (and very quick) shipping. It arrived this afternoon, and I put it to use immediately. It’s a new toy, how could you not? This thing blows my Waring Pro out of the water; seriously that thing in like a kids toy compared to the SB-500. It blitzed through 10Lbs of bone-in chicken in less than 5 minutes, and it barely slowed down when it hit the thigh bones (though I do think drumstick bones might be a bit much). My only regret was that I didn’t have more to grind! Next time I make cat food I may have to make 20Lbs just for the fun of it.
So obviously the SB-500 is much more powerful than my Waring Pro; it would take 15min to go through the equivalent amount of chicken, and both drumstick and thigh bones had to be removed. The other thing I like about it is that it has little cubby holes built into it to neatly store grinder plates, and one for the power cord as well. The downside is that where my Waring Pro tucked neatly away on top of my counter this is too big for that, so I’m going to have to find some place to store it that’s out of the way. Obviously the ease of use more than makes up for any inconvenience in size, and even though it’s bigger, it’s still very light (15Lbs).
I bought mine via the Ebay store Grinders N Things, but it’s also available on the Sam Baere website. I suspect the company uses the ebay store to get rid of it’s overstock since they both ship from Cupertino, CA.
Here’s the spec’s on it:
Specifications:
Figuring out your dogs diet
One thing that I always think about is whether or not my pups are getting the right amount of nutrients, which I think is a fairly universal concern for people feeding a home-prepared diet. Granted feeding animals isn’t exactly rocket science, but an ill prepared diet can have major consequences to your pets health. Thankfully there are several helpful tools available, that though not designed for animals, are informative nonetheless.
The first is NutritionData.com, which has a very helpful application now called “my recipes”. This enables you to create a “recipe” and see the nutritional information of all ingredients together in the amounts you specify instead of having to search each item individually and total everything out yourself. It does have it’s limitations; I have found some things (i.e. beef cheek) are not in their database, and of course it doesn’t take bone content into account. However, you can easily subtract the amount of bone in a particular cut of meat and get the values for the meat itself. If you need to know the amount of bone in a particular cut, then…
Try the USDA Nutrient Data Laboratory. This has a much more limited database than Nutrition Data, especially for red meat cuts, but otherwise it’s very helpful, and most importantly lists the bone content of various cuts. Once we know the amount of bone in a cut we can figure out how much calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, zinc, and copper they provide, by using the very helpful information in Raising Cats Naturally, which states that in 100g (3.5oz) of bone there’s: 25,000mg calcium, 12,000mg phosphorus, 370mg magnesium, 700mg potassium, 9mg zinc, .5mg copper.
Once you’ve entered your “recipes” and taken into account the amount of bone you can check them against This excellent list of nutrient requirements for dogs divided by weight available at Boxerlife.com. If your dog either lacking certain nutrients, or has excessive amounts of them, then you can search Nutrition Data for foods higher or lower in certain nutrients by food type (i.e. poultry, vegetables, etc.), and adjust your dogs diet accordingly.
Greentripe.com Cow Gullets
yummy
Yesterday was our January SCB order, and the only new product we’re trying this month is the Greentripe.com cow gullets. We’ve tried the trachea in the past and aside from icking me out they didn’t seem to work as well for our pups joints as chicken feet do. I don’t know if these will make a difference or not and since I’ve only fed them once I wouldn’t see any difference anyway. In a month or so I will update if they’ve been helping the dogs joints or not. For now I will stick to what I can tell you: 1.) these don’t gross me out nearly as much as the trachea, 2.) though not as easy to cut up as the trachea they’re not difficult either, 3.) even cut into fourths they offer a much better chew for the dogs than trachea, 4.) where the dogs seemed pretty indifferent about the trachea, they were really excited about the gullet.
I only ordered 1 bag of these (they came 3 to a bag) since I didn’t know if the dogs would like them, etc. Next time they’re available I’ll order several bags because even if they don’t do much for the dogs joints they offer an excellent chew, especially for Abby who seems to power her way through most chews in a matter of minutes.
SoCal company recalls 864,000Lbs of beef
MONTEBELLO, Calif. – A Montebello meat-packing firm has recalled some 864,000 pounds of ground-beef that might be contaminated with E. coli.
The Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said Monday that no illnesses have been reported from the products sold by Montebello-based Huntington Meat Packing Inc. under the Huntington, Imperial Meat Co. and El Rancho brands.
The affected beef was sold to distribution centers, restaurants and hotels in California between Feb. 19 and May 15, 2008, and between Jan 5. and Jan. 15, 2010.
Huntington did not return a phone message.
Officials say department personnel discovered the problem during a food safety assessment.
E. coli is a potentially deadly germ that can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and, in the most severe cases, kidney failure.
Around the house
a few pictures…
Simca loves watching TV
Riley's new best friend, Hiro
The evil red dot (laser pointer) is teasing her
Boxer loves her daddy
super tug-o-war
We took these using a neat little function on my digital camera that takes a bunch of photos in quick succession; unfortunately the photos come out small and hard to see.
Simca & Hiro chasing the evil red dot
Merry Christmas – SCB December ‘09 order
Had to pick-up for our site, and that’s always an… experience. We had the usual problem of turning up to find orders that hadn’t been sent to me, so we had a considerable amount of food to pick up that we didn’t know about. We were extremely lucky to be able to fit everything into the U-Haul pick-up truck we rented; we were really (and justifiably) concerned we wouldn’t fit it all in and we almost didn’t. Once we got to the site hosts house we were lucky to have 3 other people there to help us unload and sort orders, so it went very quickly. James and I certainly appreciated it since we were operating on very little sleep (I only got 3 hours). We were home by 1p after returning the U-Haul. We’ve been asked a couple of times how much it costs to rent the U-Haul, and including milage about $45 (there is a rental center about 2 miles from the cold storage so we rent from there to reduce milage fees).
One of the benefits of working the cold storage/picking-up is that you get to check out some of the other products. Yesterday we got a good look at the cornish game hens. They’re a “catch weight” product, and all the boxes we got yesterday were over 40Lbs. They are all individually wrapped in the box and look to be 12-16oz each. I’m not sure I will order them in the future as they’re a bit more than I like to spend on poultry, but they would be easy to grind for the kittens, and they’re just the right size for the dogs, so I might.
We did get shorted our pre-ground chicken necks, which is an inconvenience, but these things happen; I’ll find a way around it. So the new products:
40Lbs Ground Turkey Breast: I’m not sure if this is going to be available anymore, at least in this size, but it’s nice. I got it for cheap (.75c/Lb) I assume because it’s been in the freezer a year or more (and can no longer be sold for human consumption). It was freezer burned on the top and sides, but that dogs don’t care about that. I gave them some for breakfast this morning and they enjoyed it. As I was dividing it up afterwards Simca was busying herself by licking up the little bits that fell on the floor. It was surprisingly easy to deal with; I simply wrapped it in a big trash sack and let it defrost in the sink until this morning. Most of it was thawed, but the middle was still a bit frozen, but very easy to break apart into chunks.
Organic Kelp: I erroneously assumed this was the same kelp that had been available from LifeLink that I’ve been using for a while. It was not. It’s a kelp powder, and I’m not fond of powdered kelp. The dogs don’t mind, but I’m always worried that I’m feeding them too much; I much prefer the flaked kelp. I won’t order it again, though I will use it up.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Dog owners get more exercise than gym members
| Dec 1, 2009 VETERINARY ECONOMICS |
Responsible dog owners know the benefits of walking their dogs—happier pets, fewer accidents in the house. But they may not know that those walks benefit their own health as much as their dogs’.
According to a new study conducted by British pet health company Bob Martin found that dog owners get more exercise than gym members. The average dog owner walks his or her pooch twice a day for 24 minutes each stroll, plus three longer treks a week at 51 minutes each. That’s more than eight hours of exercise per week, compared to just one hour and 20 minutes that the average gym member gets.
Pet owners aren’t only getting more exercise than many gym members—they’re enjoying it more, too. Eighty-six percent of dog owners said they like walking with their pet, while just 16 percent of people reported enjoying going to the gym.
Help pets of the homeless
I often think that having a dog would be a great comfort to me if I was forced to live on the street. So when I see a pup curled up next to someone who appears to be homeless, I have mixed feelings. I think it must be a benefit for the person but I worry about them both. I worry that the dog, just like the person, may not be getting enough food, water or medical attention. And I know that having a dog can be a liability on the street, since most shelters and other services have no place for them.
This week is a perfect time to do something to help the homeless and their pets. Each year, one week before Thanksgiving (Nov. 15-21), the National Coalition for the Homeless(NCH) and the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness co-sponsor National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. During this week, a number of schools, communities and cities take part in a nationwide effort to bring greater awareness to the problems of hunger and homelessness. This year,Feeding Pets of the Homeless is joining their efforts to draw attention to the pets of the homeless. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, there are an estimated 3.5 million homeless persons in the United States, and the number is increasing. NCH has also estimated that up to 10 percent of homeless people have at least one pet. For those with pets, finding pet food, shelter and other assistance is more difficult.
Feeding Pets of the Homeless has more than 200 volunteer/collection sites in a number of cities across the country. Donations of pet food and pet supplies are needed. The organization has more than 100 distributing organizations in place that have agreed to offer the pet food to the homeless and needy. They include local food banks, food pantries, homeless shelters and soup kitchens.
In addition, help for many homeless with pets comes from free clinics that provide a basic check up, vaccines, medicines, flea and tick treatments, spay or neuter, along with pet food and other pet products. These clinics depend on grants to licensed veterinarians from Feeding Pets of the Homeless and the generosity of many of the veterinarian’s distributors who donate products. Grants are made possible from donations from the public to Feeding Pets of the Homeless.
Find a list of pet food collection sites in your community. If there isn’t a collection site near you, contact Feeding Pets of the Homeless to learn how to start one.
Nov. ‘09 SCB order
gobble, gobble!
Taken me a few days to get around to doing this. Despite the small size of the order it took me 2 days to complete dividing it up. Only 3 new products this time:
Whole Turkey: Never again. You could not pay me enough to deal with these f**king things one more time. I actually injured myself; every time I try to move my right thumb I get a shooting pain from tip to wrist. I spent 2 hours trying to hack these things apart sunday morning (they needed to thaw overnight since they were large – 45Lbs divided between 2 birds), and finally just gave up midway through the second one, and after removing all the meat I could chucked the carcass in the trash. I thought I’d be able to grind that up for the dogs, but it clogged my grinder (not exactly sure why as it can handle whole chickens with skin & bones), so…yeah. I’ll just stick to buying it in pieces and pre-ground meat.
(distressed) Lamb Stew Meat: What a dream compared to the turkey. Came nicely cryovac’d in roughly 5Lbs bags. Thawed relatively quickly, and was super easy to divide up. They cryovac pack kept it from getting freezer burned so the meat looked nice and perfect, and it was lean to boot. I gave the dogs some with dinner on saturday night and they seemed to like it. If I had more freezer space I might have gotten another box since it’s a limited availability item, and it’s priced really well ($5/8Lb).
Beef Liver: This is the first time I’ve bought beef liver in bulk, and I actually quite like it. Like the lamb stew meat it came cryovac’d, so it wasn’t leaking everywhere like the chicken liver I normally get does (no matter how many bags that stuff is wrapped in it always leaks). The dogs really don’t show any preference for organ meat from one animal or another, so no big deal there. I purchased this instead of chicken because after comparing liver on nutritiondata.com I decided this fit in with my dogs diet better.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
