Ramblings-n-Writings

Archive for October 30th, 2008

Frugal Friday is back! One of the ways we’re trying to be frugal is with our pet food. With a herd of cats, a large dog, and 3 puppies, we’ve tried to figure out how to cut the pet food bill a little bit.

It’s easy to cut a people food bill – coupons, growing own produce, raising livestock or participating in a co-op. But pets are a little more challenging.

A couple of months ago, I received a free subscription to Rachael Ray’s cooking magazine. Besides yummy people food recipes, the magazine always has a pet food recipe in the back.

Right now, my goal is to make one meal for the dogs each week – I’m still learning! While it sounds simple, the challenge is knowing how much to make for them and also keeping the meal nutritionally balanced for dogs.

Just giving them leftovers of people food is not a good choice; however, the basic components of a pet food meal are similar to people food meals – meat, veggie, grain, seasonings, liquid.

Once we master how to make the food, I’d like to feed a real food meal every other night and eventually every night.

So how could that be a frugal choice? For us, it is logical as well as frugal especially with the rising cost of commercial pet food. Since we live on a farm, we have access to a variety of meats and vegetables. In the future, I envision us planting a portion of our garden strictly for pet consumption.

As far as the extra time involved in making the food, a lot of the meals could be coordinated with our people food meals. Instead of cooking 1 lb of chicken, we can cook 2 lbs. And some meals could be prepared ahead and frozen for future use.

Do you have any experience making pet food? I’d love to hear from you about the pros and cons!

(Jump over to Crystal’s blog for more Frugal Friday ideas.)