Promiseland

[erikavonkaiser]

If you have energy for it at any point I'd be interested in hearing how you approach raw-feeding Oz and where you source from! My next Creature I take care of I'm considering raw feeding a little more. Baby always liked it in the past but now she has her special kidney-friendly kibble and is pretty elderly/easily upset tummy so I don't intend to disrupt that.

(I know it's different between dogs and cats since cats are, to my knowledge, obligate carnivores and dogs are not, but just out of curiosity)

[Fetian]

A good sign: Oz didn't try to eat my pillowcases this morning

[Fetian]

If you have energy for it at any point I'd be interested in hearing how you approach raw-feeding Oz and where you source from! My next Creature I take care of I'm considering raw feeding a little more. Baby always liked it in the past but now she has her special kidney-friendly kibble and is pretty elderly/easily upset tummy so I don't intend to disrupt that.

(I know it's different between dogs and cats since cats are, to my knowledge, obligate carnivores and dogs are not, but just out of curiosity)

Yeah, my understanding is that cats are a better candidate than dogs for it, but I have known people who have raw fed their dogs for years with no issues. I know you can buy like, pre-prepared raw meals these days, but I don't like them because they're ground (or, at least, all the ones I've seen are) and the enrichment of tearing apart a semi-whole Meat Thing™, and the dental benefits of breaking down whole (appropriately-sized) bones are important parts of going raw for me

I prefer using human-grade meats to reduce the risks of bacteria, parasites, etc -- I went with a source specifically for raw feeding a while back and had largely good experiences with it, but a couple of bad experiences that turned me off of the whole thing (something in the whole batch made Oz sick and I had to throw out all of it rather than risk harming her by trying to figure out which specific item was bad, and on top of the concerns of her wellbeing it's just super inconvenient to be out the money for what's supposed to be a couple months of food, and have to rush to replace it). I've found it wasn't that much cheaper to go with them over a butcher, though of course that's going to depend on location. I would never feed wild-caught, also for food-borne-illness risks (you can't cook out a parasite if you're feeding, you know, raw). So, for what I can get at any ol' grocery store (game hens, and they usually have chicken hearts) I'll get at any ol' grocery store and what I can't I'll get at a butcher. Oh, and little arab market stores and similar were good for getting packs of immature quail, which are great for Oz because I can just cut them in half and give them to her, no other prep needed.

It's really important to give a variety of meat sources to maximise the nutrient profile (also, again, enrichment is part of the benefit for me and it's not super enriching to just get chicken all the time for every meal). Key items in Oz's rotation would be hen, rabbit, quail, and occasionally a couple of eggs. And livestock for organs

I use this calculator to measure out how much she should be eating: https://perfectlyrawsome.com/pmr-barf-d ... lculators/ -- I think that site is also good for general info, though what-all I know has been gotten from a bunch of different sources and composited together in my head

A raw diet will be x percentage of their diet as muscle-meat-and-bones, a lesser percentage of specifically liver meat, and an equal percentage of some variety of other organs -- cats will also need heart, and dogs on Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods (BARF) rather than Prey Model Raw (PMR) will be getting starches. I haven't done a lot of research into it because I don't have a dog, so I don't know much about the specifics of raw feeding them, but if I did have a dog I would probably go with BARF over PMR, or do a modified PMR to provide appropriate non-meat foods. On the whole you'd largely be just, seeing what your pet does well on. If they're pooping fine, they seem healthy, and they're getting good marks at the vet then their diet is probably doing them alright

When switching from commercial food to raw, you start off with just the muscle meat from a "bland" source (chicken) to help their stomachs makes the transition, add bones (and heart, for cats) as they get adjusted, then add liver and then other organs. It's important to go slowly with the liver, because liver is very rich and can make them sick if they're not ready for it. For Oz that takes a couple of weeks, different animals will take to it at different rates. Some people will feed raw and kibble at the same time (in different meals) to cover all their bases, but I've never been a fan of that because I think it raises the risk of the animal getting salmonella -- it might be more okay for dogs, though, I'm not sure. My understanding though, at least with cats, is that kibble will sit in their stomach for longer to be digested than raw does, and part of the transition process is adjusting their digestion process back to a more natural state. If you give them raw while their stomach is still in slow-mode then whatever bacteria is in the food has a higher chance of infecting the animal. But, like I said, I don't know with dogs and I would assume that with starches in their diet it would be similar with them eating kibble anyway

So yeah! For Oz I get human-grade meat from some local store, break it down into meal-sized chunks, bag those up, and freeze whatever she won't eat in a couple days, then rotate those out. Then at meal-times I just dump the bag into her bowl. It's definitely time-consuming (and handling organ meats is my Least Favourite Thing) but it's not that hard once I've got a system going

Let me know if that didn't answer any questions, I just woke up so I'm kind of all over the place in my brain (though I've also been picking away at replying for a couple hours, so like, now I haven't just woke up, but you know)

[Fetian]

We weighed Cael today and he is 11.9 lbs

[erikavonkaiser]

Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods (BARF)

This is a deeply unfortunate acronym

That makes sense, though! I don't know if I'd ever be able to commit to a fully-raw diet for a pet just due to my own spell slots in terms of getting/prepping ingredients, and I've definitely seen some instagram influencer types raw-feeding their dogs with what looks like approximately $2000 in niche supplies, but I'd be interested in seeing if there's a good way to balance kibble with raw for dogs. I'll keep that website handy just in case, too!

[Fetian]

I am so braindead today. Oz was waking me up trying to eat my pillows again -- the problem with raw feeding is that it's harder to give her snacks if she needs something to tide her over until her actual meal-time, and apparently the meals I've arranged for her aren't enough to keep her sated through the day. So I'll need to re-arrange things a bit

But, so, I was awake from 8, I think, through 10-something when it was finally close enough to her designated breakfast time to feed her, so I did that and then Cael kept trying to bother her while she was eating. He has been a bit of an asshole again lately, I think because he's having trouble with his food now too, which I think I've talked about.

I finally went back to sleep for a couple hours and then I woke up to Loki attacking Oz in the cat tree, so that was great. She's fine, though. But given that, Loki is not allowed in my room anymore

On actually being awake I discovered that the way I've been transferring files from my external drive to dropbox has actually been deleting them from dropbox, so that's great, love that system. It should be fine, I can just recover them from 'deleted files', but it's a pain in the ass that's going to take forever and I don't really have any guarantees I'll get everything back. Super annoying!

I was going to go over to dad's today, but I guess I got times wrong when I was looking at transit schedules yesterday and now I'll get there like ten minutes before I have to leave, so we've rescheduled. He's golfing tomorrow, and then Friday ash and I are supposed to go ice skating, so I'm going to go over on Saturday while ash does some grocery shopping in the area. And then video games with Erika and Dave

I need to pill Oz and empty the dishwasher, and do that food rearranging, and then I'm going to zone out for the rest of the afternoon because see aforementioned 'braindead'

[Fetian]

0104240000.jpg

 
Ate them too fast to get a good picture

But! Puds stuffed with layered ham and fancy cheese. So good, definitely worth the heartburn

[Fetian]

A bunch of my phone games have stopped letting me play offline, which is super annoying

---

#hedgepost

[Fetian]

Well! I have upgraded the OS on the laptop and I have already discovered something I forgot to backup before I wiped the hard drive (my RSS feeds). It's not a huge loss, just going to be super tedious to fix. We can pretend it's for the best and that I needed to clean that out anyway.

I went with Manjaro, a version of Arch, and we'll see how it goes. I've run into one thing so far that I had to find workarounds to get to work, but everything else is running smoothly. I'll keep at it for a bit and see if I run into anything else that's a problem, and if so I'll switch back over to Xubuntu

 
Today I walked down to the store in search of hearts for Oz (and whatever other goodies I could find for her), the first store didn't have anything so I went to the grocery store, which also didn't have anything, so I took the bus up to a different store -- about the same distance away from the house as the first two but in the opposite direction -- and they also didn't have anything. I did get to test out my zippass on the bus, though, and it worked without any issues! I was nervous about it because it seems too easy -- I get to ride public transit for free during this semester, through the college, and how it works is I have an app on my phone that I open it and it basically just says 'student' and an expiration date. I was so sure the driver would ask me for my student ID but the website said that's not necessary anymore and the driver just looked at my phone and nodded, so! I guess it is in fact that easy. I'll have to get out more and really make use of that while I have it as an option

God I need to get used to my taskbar being at the bottom of the screen again. Maybe I should move that

Tomorrow, ash and I are going to go into the city to do some ice skating, if his head is okay. It will be my first time ice skating! I'm nervous about it, because I know it's a hard one to get used to, but I'm sure it'll be fun. Hopefully it's not too crowded

I'm gonna go mess with my computer and try to get more programs running

[Fetian]

Took a couple hours but I finally got a version of Scrivener working, which was the most important and most doubtful thing that needed to get installed. And I learned some things about installing programs in Arch!

I should start heading bedwards now, I suppose