Economical Dogfood

With 2 maremma dogs as guards for our herd of boer goats, I like to make sure that they are getting good nutrition.  Whilst not fussy animals, I am not keen on giving them stuff out of a can from the supermarket.  I have a simple recipe that seems to fill them up and has lots of good vitamins for them too.  First I cook up a huge batch of pasta: usually 2 x 1kg packets of penne pasta.  I like the plain pack ALDI stuff the best as it seems to hold its shape better and doesnt cost a fortune.  I cook this up in our Ozfarmer preserver which holds 27 litres and means I have plenty of water to properly cook the pasta.  Sometimes I also add some rice, barley or lentils to the pasta (cooking them first before adding the pasta due to its shorter cooking time).  Once cooked the pasta is drained out and stored in a container in the fridge (we have a special esky for our dog food).

Then I make up a sauce.  For the sauce I use 2 kg of pet mince from the local butcher, a whole pumpkin, some carrots, a huge handful of fresh herbs and some fresh greens out of the garden.  I put all this in my pressure canner, cover it with water and cook it under pressure for 15 minutes.  When it's cooked, i mash it all up (even though the dogs love the carrots and pumpkin chunks) and the mixture is like a sloppy bolognaise mix.  I then get 4 x large Ball Mason half gallon jars (these hold close to 2 litres) and putting a funnel in the mouth, ladle the mixture into the bottles up to the bottom of the funnel to leave some head space in the bottle. I seal the jars and can fit 4 nicely into my 23 quart Presto pressure canner.  I have the special 3 piece regulator for my canner which allows me to adjust the pressure from 15psi which I use to cook the mixture, to 10psi to  bottle the mixture by simply removing one of the weights off the regulator.  This means I can have the stove on medium heat and it will just cook away for the prescribed time without me having to monitor the pressure.  I process the bottles for 20 minutes and then leave the cooker to cool down by itself. 

I also periodically can vegetables as I have surpluses.  Currently I have a heap of carrots in jars so "assembly" of dinner for the dogs entails the following:

a good serving of pasta

topped with 1/4 - 1/3 bottle of sauce per dog

extra serve of carrots or other veges

1 or 2 fresh free range eggs

and one or 2 bones to clean their teeth at the end!!