Milk soda

Sodastream missed the boat on this one.

I think I've reached the point with the kefir where it's working and it's safe to eat. And it doesn't taste bad...

But it's really fizzy. It's weird. I know that some people like this and aim for fizzy by using a tight lid. 

I am not aiming for fizzy.

So I guess the long and short here is that the struggle to negotiate proper temperature, time, and quantity continues.

And I wish I'd put the grains in a muslin bag to start with instead of straining them from the kefir. But I digress...

The Kefir Kraze

Keh-fur, kee-fur, kuh-fear... I've yet to figure out exactly how it's pronounced (I'm pretty sure it's the last one...? ). Regardless, it's awesome stuff.

It is also a total mystery to me. And I have been making my own yogurt for years, not counting all the years we made it while I was growing up. I am not new to fermenting milk. This is just a different beast...

I bought some dried milk kefir grains. They were packed in powdered milk. So my first task has been to rehydrate and prepare the grains for use. This is supposed to take a week or so.

I added a cup of cold whole milk, per instructions, covered it with a coffee filter, and set it in the water heater closet. It's cold in our kitchen.

Twenty-four hours later, I strained it (in a non-reactive strainer), put the grains in a fresh jar and added more milk. All was going according to plan.

Well... Next day I pulled out the jar, and it had completely separated into curds and whey. Smelled sour and yeasty (which it's supposed to at this stage), but it's not supposed to be like this. I had to stir it all together and strain it about a hundred times, adding a little fresh milk, before I could separate out the grains.

Thought maybe it was too warm. Put it in the cabinet with the dishes, but it still separated quite a bit. So I thought maybe the grains are growing faster than expected and need more milk. That seems to have helped. The last time I changed it out, it had a layer of yeasty foam and was smelling cleaner. Less separation. Hopefully, we're almost there...

Will continue to update as we go...

The chart explained

This may end up becoming multiple posts, but here goes...

Here it is; I'm told that Victor may be closer to $38/bag at our local farmer's co-op. I'm going to try to go there tomorrow to get some more info on my lunch break. The previous post shows the text that accompanied the chart on Facebook. (ETA-- just went back and saw that it's around $38 WITH TAX. All the chart prices are before tax, so the Victor price should still be about right.)

I'm asked general dog questions all the time, particularly about food. And let's be real. Feeding raw the convenient way isn't even close to being affordable for most people; and making it themselves isn't really in the cards for most others. It's still is daunting and can be time consuming-- if you're not prepping the ingredients and processing meat, you're tracking down deals. It can be costly if you can't buy in bulk or find good deals. And it's just not for the squeamish or the busy. 

Back when we used to feed kibble as their sole diet, I wanted to get the. Very best food we could afford, and we couldn't afford much. But we also had a variety of dietary needs, etc. 

And I am OCD in a very real way. I wanted to know if the better foods really were cheaper than they looked, which we could best afford... And so I did all these calculations scribbled on legal pads. I did this for the cats, too. I loaned my scribbles to people looking for new foods, I lost them. I did them over...

I've got a lot of friends recently with new dogs, so I thought now would be a great time to formalize that chart. 

The long and short is, high quality foods may cost more per bag or per pound, but that's not the whole story. 

I had to make a number of informed assumptions to create the chart

First, I used the feeding guidelines as recommended by the manufacturer. It's important to know that these are frequently inflated. But I wanted to use the conditions that the average owner would be using, and I'm not really interested in making the decision about how many calories a 25 or 50lb dog needs. 

In calculating cups per bag, I used the kcal/kg or grams/cup compared to calories per cup to determine this. So if a 30lb bag of food has 4000 calories per kg, and 400 calories per cup:

30lbs = 13.64kg (@2.2lbs/kg)

13.64kg x 4000 = 54,560 calories per bag

54,560 / 400 calories per cup = 136.4 cups per bag

Make sense?

The problem here is that you're moving from weight to volume to measure mass, so it can't be accurate. A pound of gravel takes up more volume than a pound of sand. And each measuring cup, even if it measures 8floz like every other one cup measure, the variations in shape are going to garner different mass. 

So, I cannot promise that there are exactly that many cups and it will cost exactly that much per day, etc. But I don't think it negates the overarching point: that "expensive food" isn't necessarily expensive.

These foods are representative. Remember that each of these brands has numerous flavors and varieties, and each one is not the same-- not the same caloric content, not the same price per day, not the same ingredients. But, again, they represent options.

Some are owned by big companies. When I say that they have been recalled, know that it's not necessarily that flavor, but rather that variety; I've done my best to find the correct info here-- please let me know if I'm wrong-- however, these are huge companies and some have had huge recalls.

Take the recalls with a grain of salt. Salmonella, as I think I've talked about before, isn't so scary for dogs, more so for people (so wash your hands!). I'm usually more concerned with how the company handles a issue like that. I'll let you research those yourself for now.

You get what you pay for, but not always. My choice of foods here was meant to represent some mid-range grocery brands, what we've traditionally thought of as "good, fancy" food, and an affordable range of more holistic foods (grain free and inclusive), and there's a wide spectrum of cost across the board. 

Victor is one of the cheaper foods; but it's ingredients are solid and certain varieties boast that they are GMO free with American sourced proteins. They are a family-owned company, as is Merrick; Whole Earth Farms (made by Merrick) is USA made with no Chinese-sourced products. But Blue Buffalo is one of the most expensive. It's good food, but of those three, which has the most familiar name? Blue spends a lot on advertising, whereas the others don't.

On the other hand, the 1-3 star foods have a lot of cheap fillers, but they spend even more on advertising than Blue. Who do you think is spending more on quality ingredients?

The returns go beyond your pocketbook. Dogs eating more nutritious food eat less and utilize more-- meaning smaller poops. Ingredients that they can handle better means less body odor, fewer allergies, less itching, fewer staph infections-- the potential for fewer and lower vet bills over time. 

Healthier, happier dogs.

And every dog is an individual. Each  of the 4-5 star foods are good foods, but each is different. Some may tolerate certain brands and varieties better than others, so if one doesn't work for your dog, don't give up. It doesn't mean it's bad food, and it doesn't mean holistic or natural foods are BS. 

This isn't exhaustive, it's not complete-- it will always be in flux. I will add to and adjust as new information comes in or as new foods crop up.

I hope it's a start...

Dog Food Costs

If you found your way here via my dog food chart... bear with me. I have a lot to say about it. :)

But not a lot of time right this minute...

So here it is again with my commentary from the Facebook post, and I will elaborate and update (I was off on my Victor costs per bag by a couple bucks) this evening or tomorrow, so check back then!

This list is something I will build upon over time, and that I will adjust as I get new info. Please feel free to share, tag, ask questions and send suggestions for future versions... This isn't at all to judge-- not every dog will do well on every food-- it's just to provide some info. Many people think feeding a quality dog food needs to be expensive. But if you know where to look and HOW to look, you'll see it doesn't have to be. I plan to write in much greater detail tonight when I have the time. But here are a few take-aways.

Feeding higher quality food (and the right food for YOUR individual dog) can potentially save on long term health care costs; the poop factor cannot be stressed enough (so much smaller); less gas; fewer allergies; less doggie "smell"; more *quality* energy-- a healthier, happier dog.

The last 3 columns are where the data is all culminated-- everything before it is showing my work.  You can feed a 4-5 star food for pennies more per month than what VERY popular one star foods cost, and in fact for less than some of the 2.5-3 star foods. Feeding these foods to a 25-50lb dog will cost you dollars per YEAR. It's really not much at all over time, even though the up front cost looks bad.

These are simply representative samples, and some other flavors in the same lines will cost more or less. I used grain free and grain inclusive varieties. I tried to choose foods that are easy to find locally or online with free shipping. I used the NON-SALE prices for everything, and used the kcal/kg info from each company to calculate cups per bag. So you can see, there are likely ways of getting most of these cheaper.

As for the popular brands listed, I chose popular "mid-range" grocery store brands as well as what we've traditionally thought of as the "good stuff."

I also used the recommended daily amounts provided by each company, which are frankly notoriously high as a general rule of thumb.

And a word on recalls. Salmonella is FAR more scary for people than for animals, so honestly the salmonella itself doesn't scare me. I am more concerned by the way a company handles it. And the brands owned by huge companies are hard to really report on with regards to recalls since they are so huge...