November - from the 'Year at Robie Creek' series

Originally published in the:

Hello again! How are things in your neck of the woods? All remains well here in Robie Creek. Most of the leaves have fallen now, making a bright-yellow-and-brown carpet beneath white-barked alders, green-and-brown firs and pines, and bright-red first-year redosier dogwood branches. Spotty bits of ‘quilt batting’ snow that have gathered here and there will soon be part of a thick white duvet keeping the earth snug as the proverbial bug in its apparently very cozy rug (an apropos simile, given the level of insect activity that never stops beneath it).

It’s been an interesting summer. Dude’s job has taken him from active wildfires to roads redirected by rivers and landslides through breathtaking mountain vistas to blown-out mining tailings ponds. I’ve been interested to learn along the way, among other things, that processes using solar energy and chlorine can go a long way toward restoring areas contaminated by those ponds. Of course the use of chlorine has its own consequences for plant and animal life where it’s applied in high concentration in the waterways, but it dilutes and breaks down quickly in active water and even more quickly with exposure to sunlight, much more so than do the substances it’s used to remove. Those compounds generally cause long-term and often significant damage, so while the tradeoff isn’t ideal these processes can mean paying a smaller environmental price for many of the amenities of modern daily life.

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I mentioned last month putting ground eggshells and greens in the eggs we feed our cats and dogs. I thought it might be worth expounding on our feeding regimen a bit, as we’ve found it’s led to much better health for our furry four-legged friends than the kibble food they ate once upon a time. It’s fairly simple, really.

In the mornings everyone gets eggs with a healthy dose of the aforementioned fine-ground eggshell/plant mixture. An egg contains everything it takes to grow a complete animal. Its white is largely protein with small amounts of many vitamins and minerals as well as water, but raw whites also contain avidin, broken down by cooking, which is vilified for its property of binding biotin.

However, egg yolks contain – along with Omega-3 and -6 fatty acids and other healthy fats, vitamins A and D, folate, and good-to-excellent amounts of many other vitamins and minerals – quite a lot of biotin, more than the avidin will bind. Avidin is also thought to provide an antibiotic effect, so while too much of either part of the egg on its own may be detrimental, in concert whites and yolks provide a well-balanced and largely complete nutritional profile.

Rounding out that picture, a half-teaspoon of eggshell, from which a growing organism within the egg would extract calcium during development, provides 90% of the RDA for calcium in a 2000-calorie per day diet as well as many trace minerals and nutrients. Leaving the membrane in the shells when they’re dried and ground packs in even more good stuff. Throw in some dried grasses, seeds, roots, flowers, and bugs if they’re handy and free of chemicals, thus imitating the gut contents of prey animals, and there’s even some fiber in the mix. Eggs are also a good source of taurine (insects an even better one), which many animals (including humans) synthesize from other compounds, but which obligate carnivores such as cats and ferrets cannot.

As nearly-nutritionally-complete as their morning meal is, a diet of eggs alone lacks the teeth-cleaning, gum-conditioning, jaw-strengthening, belly-filling nature of meat, especially meat on the bone, for our omnivorous and carnivorous friends. Thus, their afternoon meal consists of a variety of raw meats, including bones and offal, sometimes ground and sometimes in whole form. The ‘fur-babies’ are also encouraged to hunt bugs and mice (hard as the latter is for me to see), although if I see them with a bird, squirrel, chipmunk, bat, lizard, or snake that’s not yet badly damaged as is often the case when they catch one of those types of critters and bring it to the door, I’m afraid I take the initiative to release it or home it in one of our habitats, either just long enough to recover if necessary, or permanently if there’s room in an appropriate mini-biome and they seem comfortable being there. A line must be drawn somewhere.

On the back of this diet, our cats and dogs maintain healthy weights aside from one dog who carries about an extra twenty pounds to the extra forty or so he used to carry. He has mechanical and chemical health issues that make it very difficult for him to maintain physical fitness, but he’s both less sluggish overall and less prone to hyperactive bursts on real food than he is on kibble. Their skin and fur are also healthier, tending less toward oiliness or dryness, and they shed less overall than they once did. Seasonal sheds are released more quickly and cleanly too, not to mention that Dude and I find their dander to be less allergenic to us.

The cats’ allergies, of those that had them, are also reduced and in most cases gone, as is the vomiting some of them used to do on a regular basis. They poop less and its odor is less noticeable and unpleasant, and they drink less water but because they’re getting the water they need through their diets their urine is much less concentrated, therefore also less smelly than it was on kibble. Of course we also feed them scraps of all kinds, and they eat whatever of those they like before the rest is divided between our vegetarians and smaller omnivores. The cost is about the same as a reasonably good kibble or canned diet, and considerably less than most of the highest-quality ones.

And with that again our time is up. Happy Thanksgiving to our American readers! As always, from Robie Creek to Owl Creek, take care, be safe, have fun.

With much love,

Peace & the Dudes Jaway

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