Paula van der Voort, a Boxer breeder, describes her natural rearing protocol: raw feeding pregnant dogs, homeopathic remedies like Arnica and Caulophyllum for whelping, sourcing grass-fed meat and organs, and skipping routine wormers in favor of fecal testing. She runs a meat co-op and founded the Dog Breeder Store to supply breeders pursuing longer lifespans through species-specific diets.
Chapters
We have to reintroduce Brady because people will have forgotten who he is. Okay, this guy over here is Conor Brady.
Oh no, that's not French. Bonjour.
How are you? I'm very good. How are you and how was your holidays?
My holiday was very good. I wore this white top on purpose because it'll make my tan pop, although I know you don't respect tans. It's probably the first tan I've had in many, many, many, many, many, many months. And it was raining when I left and it was raining when I came home. And it's like, oh, I missed Ireland. But yeah, lovely holiday. 2 weeks. You can't beat it.
Put my lights on super bright white, and I've put myself on the opposite side of the screen from you, Conor, just in case the fact that I've been working outdoors outshines your tan.
That's not fair. Do put me beside Nick, though. That's always the good one. A ghost-like entity, that is Nick.
It's my Irish heritage. It is indeed. Where you got your tan from, I dread to think.
Bottle of Brisbane. How was last week? How was IBD? Was it good?
It was good. I really enjoyed it.
We've got to have to do a part 2 because we, strangely enough, was talking so much that we've overrun and we decided that we're going to have to do a part 2.
Nice.
Yeah, it was really meaty. It was great. It was. Boys, I've got some really, really exciting news. One of our chickens 2 weeks ago was hit by a car. Oh, and she was, she was, uh, immobile for a week, and we thought we were going to lose her. But I've just seen her just now in the garden walking around with a bit of a limp, but God bless her, she's back on her feet.
I'm so pleased.
I'm so pleased.
I was worried what you were going to say.
I was worried at the start. I am after having the best dinner. Yeah.
Mavs enjoyed her. She was lovely.
Mavs enjoyed the chicken. Yeah. Oh no, they're really good. We got 3 sighthounds and 4 chickens and they get on great.
It's amazing. How does the new import, he was a 4-month-old greyhound, how does he get on with the chickens? How can that possibly be?
He's cool. He's cool. I don't know. Maybe the girls have taught him.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's like the lion and the lamb lying down together. At this place, and we— nothing to do with me, I can tell you. There's been zero training. They've just, uh, they just rub along. It's amazing. How about you, Bren? What, any, any news before we get into the lovely Paula?
Oh yeah, well, we've obviously had our conference. I don't think you guys missed an amazing day on behavior and nutrition. Um, lots of things from FMT, so fecal microbial transfer plant, uh, all the way through to, um, just individual nutrients, nutrition, um, you know, feeding types, cats, dogs, the lot on Saturday. Excellent. A great interest actually also in, um, Are You Raw Curious on the Friday afternoon. So great. There's catch-up videos if you go on to the rfes.info. You can join, you can, um, ask for a ticket for the videos and upload those. Um, there was a conspicuous absence from a promise from a certain person that was going to deliver a great talk on behaviour and nutrition. But alas, you know, not everybody can fulfil their promises, so we'll give him at some point. So I don't know why— Conor, why are you groaning so much?
Anyway, yeah, that was a slip. It's like I was talking to Amaya constantly about it, and then like 2 days beforehand, it's like, so It's like, oh my God, I'm in the south of France enjoying myself with cocktails. Please don't remind me of that. I'm sweating just thinking about it. Oh, so bad.
Anyway, anyway, guys, Conor has introduced us to Paula. Do you want to just give us a little intro and let's get her in? She's got lots to teach us. Yeah, I'm really keen to crack on.
I don't even know how we first met. Oh, but let's just bring in Paula first. There's very little point in me talking about it when she's right there waiting to come in. But This is Paula.
Hey, Paula, great to see you.
Good to see you, Paul. Paula van der Voort. Where did you get the second name, Paula?
From my husband.
From your husband, very good. Where's your husband?
Dutch for by the fort.
I thought it was Dutch. Very good. Is he a Dutch man? I assume he is. He didn't— Yes, he doesn't— Oh, very good. Yeah. And so where are you today, Paula? Where do you live?
Houston.
Houston, nice.
Texas.
Yeah, nice and hot.
Uh, yeah, we were— we had a hurricane that barreled in last week called Hurricane Barrel. Yeah, and he caused our ceiling to collapse last night because we had a tree sticking out of our roof from it.
That's not good.
We're having to find another place to park our meat co-op that happens on Friday because there's a giant hole in the top of our roof where we normally hold it.
So scary.
Thank you so much for still doing tonight considering what you've just been through. That is amazing. That's off to you.
What's a, what's a, what's a meat co-op, Paula? Describe that to us. I hear people in the US doing that a bit, but we don't do it over here. What's a meat co-op?
Oh, oh, they're wonderful. Um, you, you gather people together, um, to have buying power, and we buy thousands and thousands of pounds of meat from meat distributors that normally only sell to restaurants and meat markets and, you know, grocery stores. But because there are a lot of us buying, and we might buy, you know, 3,000 or 4,000 pounds of meat at a time, And we can get those, all that meat for our dogs and for our families at wholesale prices. So we're paying— markets pay. So we can feed, like, I can feed an adult boxer and a small dog for $67 a month. Oh yeah, I can feed a very high quality, species-specific great raw meat diet.
Love it.
Way less than kibble diet.
Oh, that's cool. So you just need a place for it to be delivered and a gang of people that will chip in. So the— that's brilliant. That's such a simple idea.
Yeah, and we do a run every couple of months, and everybody— I have 4 freezers here. I have 2 refrigerator freezers as well. And we take delivery on a Friday, and then we let everything sort of partially thaw, and then by Sunday we're ready to do a grind. So we— I have a very high-end grinder that, you know, hunters use who are hunting deer and they want to put the whole deer through it. So we can do a grind. I didn't start that way. I started with just, you know, buying pre-made raw food like you used to sell.
Yeah.
Yeah. But when you feed a lot of big working dogs, yeah. It's a great way to do it affordably, and it's way cheaper than kibble.
Oh yeah, especially when you talk about the lack of health issues. Tell us about yourself, Paula. Tell everybody what it is you do and are doing.
Oh, well, gosh, I'm a dog breeder. I've been— I whelped my first litter when I was 17 or 18 years old. And so that's a lot of years ago. Yeah, this is not my real hair color. But we're celebrating Independence Day month here in the United States.
So, yeah.
But anyway, I've been breeding Boxers since I was a teenager. And so I always done that. And I was going to go to veterinary school. I went to college in animal science, reproductive physiology. And then I realized that vets don't make very much money. So, so I took another career path. And then after I got done with that, I was really noticing that lifespans were going way down in my breed. I'd been around in it long enough to— I just, I was observing it, you know, our lifespans were going down from the teens into like 8. And so I got very curious about why that was happening. And I ended up going to a lot of different schools. I went to the American Council of Animal Nature Operations. And I got credentialed in carnivore nutrition and a lot of other things, homeopathy and a lot of alternative medicine type things, because I wanted to apply that knowledge to my breeding program and see if it made a difference. And so I did, it made a difference. And so I started a store about 12 years ago that's called the Dog Breeder Store. It's online and In fact, I'm going to probably start carrying some of your products, Conor.
Yeah, I love Canada. My tail is wagging. Good.
Yeah, Canada. Yeah. But there really wasn't a great resource for breeders that offered alternatives to big pharma and big, and big chem. So I started it and it's been very successful. So I love the results that I'm getting as a breeder, and I'm sharing that with as many people as I can. I mentor a lot of breeders. I field phone calls every single day from every type of breeder you can imagine, everything from the Amish, you know, the people that are pumping out puppies like, you know, backyard breeders, all the way up to very high-end show breeders like me. And I get a chance to talk to them about their situations, help them save their puppies. But mostly I look for every opportunity to teach them about raw feeding, that kind of thing.
So yeah, you are— I see that you are a breeder of merit, an American Kennel Club breeder of merit. What does that mean? Is that just the— what does that mean?
Well, it's a program that the American Kennel Club offered starting probably 15 years ago, something like that. And as soon as they offered it, I was already qualified for it. It has a bunch of criteria, but you have to have bred a certain number of champions.
Oh yeah.
You have to adhere to all of the health testing that is required by your parent breed club, which I've done forever. It has nothing to do with natural rearing, but it does have to do with breeding with ethics. Yeah. And you adhere to a code of ethics and you have to prove it. And so I've been a Breeder of Merit since they started the program.
Does that mean— because I know like a lot of the breeders have to kind of— they can hip and elbow score the dogs and they have to put out a consistently high-quality dog each time. In the time that you were dry feeding your litters, I can only imagine— do you know how many litters of dogs you've had? I suppose is the first question off the top of your head.
You know, I was afraid you would ask me that. I really don't know.
A lot.
Call it 5 decades plus, maybe 1 or 2 litters a year, and some years I skip.
Yeah, yeah, a lot of doggies. So have you been— when you were dry feeding the dogs and then you changed to raw, which is one of the major changes you've probably made, Right off the top of your head, what were the differences in those litters in your opinion?
Well, raw feeding made the biggest difference of all the things we do in natural rearing because it's the bottom of, you know, it's the base of the pyramid for good health. But what I noticed right away was, oh gosh, a lot of things. Better coats. Better stools. We just stopped going to the vet. You know, literally, we just didn't have vet bills anymore other than for acute injuries. You know, if I have a dog that slams into a tree because she's chasing a squirrel or something, you know, but we just don't have itchy dogs anymore. We don't have chronic yeast. We don't have all the things that we used to have. Where— and the only vet bills we have are for health screens and reproductive services, really. So it's pretty cool.
That's incredible. It's incredible. There's Brisbane Guide Dogs over in Australia, and they were the first people that really convinced me there was a huge difference. The CEO, Chris Lane, she was only about 38, 40 at the time, and she said she changed 200 dry-fed dogs to raw food. So she did a small experiment on a small group, saw a stunning difference, and said 'Oh, let's do it.' 200 dogs in training from dry to raw, and her veterinary bills fell by 82%. That's a charity with 200 working dogs on the streets. Can you imagine what their veterinary bills were? That'd be over six figures. And their veterinary bills fell by 82%. That's in the newspaper. And I just couldn't believe it when I heard that figure. And you're not the only breeder to report that when people do jump to raw feeding. But there's— do you find, is there many natural raw feeders not raw feeding breeders. I get asked all the time, do you know a natural raw feeding breeder? Because people are aware and they want the good quality pups, and I don't have like a list or people to go to. That's how few raw feeding breeders I actually know. I know a few, but not a lot. Is there many over there?
Um, there's not enough, um, and that's the reason that we started the Natural Rearing Breeder Connection. Which is nrbreeder.com. My mentor in all of this is a woman named Dr. Jeannie Thomason, and she wrote a book. I will hold it up for you. Hopefully this is backwards, but it's called Natural Rearing by Jeannie Thomason. She is a— what's her title there? VND. She's a naturopathic doctor. And she raised Boston Terriers and poodles. And I ran into her a long, long time ago when I first started raw feeding and was investigating all of this and read her book and it was eye-opening. But she ran an organization where she taught breeders about this and also would connect breeders up with buyers who were looking for something better. And we lost her several years ago, and when she died, unfortunately, she had not given her passwords to anybody. So her credentials— when I talked with her husband after she passed, he said, just get the message out. If, if you've got important work out there, make sure that you're giving your credentials to your loved ones, because all her sites went down. Her book was no longer available. It disappeared off of Amazon. And I went to her school. It was American Council of Animal Naturopathy. And the school went away. So several of us that were students there decided that we would bring it back. And so we brought it back. It's called the Natural Rearing Breeder Connection. We teach breeders about natural rearing. It's all free. And we have a referral list. Breeders can apply to be on our website. We vet them intensely. So they have to be doing what they say they're doing. And we have a code of ethics that they have to adhere to, which it's, it's, it's a kind of a code of ethics on top of the parent breed club code of ethics. So it, it involves feeding a species-specific raw diet. It also says that we're not using any harmful chemicals in our nurseries. We're not cleaning with those. We're not using synthetic. We're not using antibiotics. We're not using pesticides, herbicides, and we're not vaccinating except as required by law.
Yeah.
Which in the United States, that's rabies.
Babies, that's amazing. Paula, can you take us through your protocol, if that's not too big an ask, for feeding pregnant bitches and then taking the pups through to like about 8 weeks? Now that's probably a week's worth of— yeah, if you can just give us the highlights. Sure, going through that, I'd be fascinated to hear what you're doing.
Well, it starts way before that. So yeah, I mean, I've produced many, many, many workshops on these subjects and they're all broken into bite-sized pieces for breeders. But everything from, you know, how to use homeopathics instead of big pharma and how to raw feed a pregnant girl and so forth. But it starts before all of that. And it starts with choosing naturally reared parents if possible, because we are dealing with the influences of epigenetics. And the more generations that we go with clean dogs genetically and physiologically, the healthier they are.
And how many generations, how many generations, Paula, do you really want to see before you hope the worst of it has passed? Like, can you give me that number?
Probably. The number I see thrown out most often is 4 to 5. Because what I learned early on, and I'll get to your question here in a second, but what I learned early on was that if you are dealing with a breeding program that's highly toxic, let's say, you know, the pedigree itself has a lot of dogs in it that have been kibble-fed, they've been heavily vaccinated. They've been giving chemical wormers. And, you know, a lot of breeders will give antibiotics prophylactically, just in case, you know, while the bitch is pregnant. So if you're dealing with that kind of a pedigree, it's— I don't want to offend anybody by using this word, but I consider it a fairly toxic pedigree. And when you shift over to natural rearing, and especially if you just start raw feeding, you may see the pedigree detox. So you may start seeing some things like GI problems that you didn't see before. You may see a lot of itching going on in that first generation. But as you go further along, especially if you— well, it's the female that matters the most. But because the bitch is influencing 3 generations, she's influencing what's happening to her. The female that's inside of her is developing every egg that she's going to have in her body that she's going to shed. So that's her, her daughter, and her daughter's daughters are all inside of her. So what we're doing with just that one dog influences 3 generations right there. So if we can go several more generations, especially if we can bring in stud dogs that are naturally reared and un— especially the vaccines that make a big difference, then we start to see up to double the lifespan. And the people that have gone ahead of me in this have documented up to double the lifespan of their respective breeds. And we certainly are seeing a lot better health in those dogs. So my, my protocol starts way back before I breed. And then as we go through the pregnancy process, where I use homeopathics, I use essential oils a lot. I use plant medicine, but you have to be careful with plant medicine if you don't know what you're doing. When they're pregnant. And the medical system that I think is the safest is homeopathy because it's pretty hard to screw that up. And if you give the wrong remedy, nothing bad happens. And so I use a lot of homeopathics if I need them during pregnancy, and I raw feed. And then I, I'm, I'm interested in having a conversation about what you all think about the changes that need to be made when a girl is pregnant because there's a lot of different protocols out there for it. And I have followed Conor's, I've followed other people's, and I have my own experience. I can relate to all of that, and that has to do with how much calcium you feed, especially as they get near the end of their pregnancy in the last trimester. But, you know, we whelp without medications. But you got to realize too that dogs have pain just like we do, and giving birth is painful and it causes bruising, and they're laying on their sides for, you know, 6 or 8 weeks. And so they get nerve pain, they get, you know, they're, they're tired, they're exhausted. And so they need a lot of extra help. And so I do—
it'd be really valuable for the other people out there, you know, you're sort of using a lot of homeopathy, you've got, you know, a lot of things that you're reducing your vet bills with. Do you have like, for those guys out there, if they're breeders, you know, a top 5 remedies to have around birthing, you know, for whelping the bitch? Do you sort of like have an emergency stock-in that you give for people that are within your group, or do you just sort of like say, no, no, you've got to study homeopathy, go off and do that first?
Um, I, you know, if I told people you have to study homeopathy, it wouldn't happen. So that top 5 is really important. And, um, when I was learning, you know, I bought my own materia medica and I was, uh, learning You know, there's thousands of homeopathic remedies to choose from. And so I would say that the number one remedy is Arnica because there is, you know, just the whole process of birthing and being pregnant is— there's some pain involved. So Arnica is great. It's great to reduce swelling. It's great for going through the whelping process. But we also, you know, as I was learning these remedies and sort of gathering my arsenal together, I put together a birthing kit. And if I can show it to you here, this is actually made by Helios Homeopathy in the UK.
We know them.
Love them. Yeah. This is for human beings. It's CB kit. It stands for childbirth. But what I did was I wrote a materia medica for dog breeders. And so I package it with this. It helps them to understand what to use because, you know, a human being can tell you what's happening. And with dogs, you have to use really good observational skills. But one of the things that we encounter when we're whelping is that maybe we think that the whelping process has stalled a little bit and we want to sort of help it along so that they don't get too exhausted. And so there's a couple of remedies in that kit that I highly recommend people have. One of them is called Caulophyllum. It's C-A-U-L-O-PHYLLUM. And we use that in the beginning process of labor to help sort of produce strong contractions. But if you think of it like oxytocin in the big pharma world, but it doesn't have all the side effects of oxytocin. Oxytocin can actually cause their uterus to split open. And if it's used incorrectly, so Caulophyllum, it's homeopathic. If it's needed, the body uses it. It's just information. It's not, it's not a pharmaceutical. And so we have another one that's called Gelsemium. And I've used that a number of times. If I feel like the girl needs a little bit of extra help to get going again, And a lot of times if I have had a couple of puppies and then I can tell they need to deliver another puppy, then I'll give them a dose of Gelsimium. And usually I'll get a puppy pretty quickly. One thing that happens when you're whelping though, is that they take these long rests. It's called a whelping pause. And there's an awful lot of unnecessary C-sections that happen because breeders panic. They've read a book that says if you don't get a puppy, you know, within 1 hour of the last puppy, go to the vet. And what the vet's going to do is they're going to C-section your dog. So I've had a whelping pause as long as 17 hours between puppies and had no problem, had the next puppy just fine.
I've seen 24. I've seen 24. Started on a Wednesday and finished on a Thursday, but she was cool. Good pups.
Yeah, as long as they're relaxed and they're not in obvious distress, there's no reason to push it along. But I also like Ledum. Ledum is great for swelling. But I use a lot, I use a lot of Arnica. Yeah, and I'll use higher potency if I need to.
And people don't realize that, um, you know, doctors don't believe in homeopathy, but they do recommend Arnica for bruising. Yeah, you know what Arnica is. Uh, can I just call out something here? This, uh, this is brand new what you just said. I'm just loving this conversation. Um, Calophyllum is a type of little plant, okay? And I just want to read out to some of the studies here backing this up. There is some evidence of the remedy's efficacy— this is a homeopathic remedy— from human and veterinary studies. Ullman quotes a French double-blind trial using Calophylum and 4 other homeopathic remedies to treat pregnant women, which showed that women who were given a remedy were in labor for an average of 5 hours compared to 8 hours on the control. And then at the bottom, there's a study there by Chris Day, the highly respected homeopathic vet who recently passed, carried out work on the incidence of stillbirths in a herd of 200 pigs and found that the Calophylum reduced the rate substantially. And there's 4 other studies there that I won't, won't bore you with, but I'll share it on Facebook now for anybody listening. I love looking up that stuff and seeing people, as soon as they hear homeopathy, sometimes their eyes glaze over because they know nothing about it. But like these vets underneath me are awesome at homeopathy. And I'm always, I've got a shelf full of homeopathic books here, which I haven't read. And I'm the odd one out. And the first time I've just invested, 'cause my kid has had a cough for the last 5 or 6 days, it won't shift. And so I just bought myself a little kit from Helios, from Poochie Park. And I'm going to learn, goddammit, I'm gonna learn over the next few days because I'm so envious that this stuff is just known by everybody except me. So I'm just loving this, Paula. So that was great. I'll share that tip.
So did you buy— Conor, did you buy the pet first aid kit from Poochie Park? Yeah. Which is made by Helios so that you could treat your daughter?
Yes.
Tell me a sec.
I'm assuming they don't make homeopathics for pets, do they? I'm assuming it's just 30cc.
They're exactly the same.
I'm just joking.
Oh, thank God. I was embarrassed there.
I'm just going to jump in there with the book. Okay, these guys give me a really hard time, Paula, because I'm always talking about books. So I would suggest for, for you, Conor, and for anybody listening who's thinking, oh, homeopathics, that sounds really interesting, there's a wonderful book by a friend of mine called Don Hamilton. He was in New Mexico, you may know him. You've got it. Yeah, great. And now he's in Vienna. And that's the bunny. That's the one. That's what— that's the one you want to get, Conor. It's, it's a really good introduction. And for everybody, by Don Hamilton. You've got it, that's great. The other one is by Chris Day. Um, he, he's done one for, for dogs, another for cats. And the other guy is George McLeod, who, who was, who was kind of with the guru as a predecessor to even Chris Day. Yeah, so there's kind of Chris Day, Francis Hunter, um, no, it goes George McLeod, uh, Francis Hunter, um, uh, and, and these people. And, and, and now at least— at least Hansen is great. Yeah, that's a great book. That's a great book.
Yeah, it's so amazing. Yeah.
So that's great, thank you. That's really great, Paula. Absolutely amazing. Carry on with the journey. You've got to, where, about halfway through pregnancy?
Yeah.
Where are you with your food and your calcium? Because that's exactly the question that I've looked at as well. How do you do the calcium thing?
Well, just to finish up the thing for Conor, try Drosera or Bryonia. For your daughter and see if that one of those helps for cough. Yeah, but we use those for kennel cough a lot.
Yeah, Drosera, I use that for kennel cough, and Bryonia, uh, it's, it's worse for movement, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
You've got Spongia tosta, you know, you've got a few. Yeah, we could all start now. We're not going to start. That's coughing. That's not tonight. Come on.
Another night.
While you're showing books too, this is backwards. You probably know Dr. Pitcairn. He runs the homeopathic school for veterinarians. I like his book for homeopathics, not so much for feeding.
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah. And he's really pushing vegan diets for dogs, which I don't agree with. But anyway, the book is good for homeopathy.
Okay.
Interesting. So we let— okay. So we let the moms make most of the choices. You know, we really are just there along to help supervise and make sure that the puppies are not fading, that they're not getting dehydrated, pushed away, you know, that their glucose levels are good and so forth. So temperatures are good because they can't thermoregulate for the first couple of weeks. So I don't leave the house for about 3 weeks when I have a litter. And so my, my girls will go from eating maybe 2 pounds of raw meat before they get pregnant to eating about 8 pounds a day. So, and I will also be syringe feeding things like blood, green tripe juice, organ juice, because organs are Mother Nature's multivitamin. And if I let them pick what they want, they will eat a lot of organ. And especially spleen. Spleen seems to have some micronutrients in it that pregnant girls need and lactating girls.
So could I ask then, in that, what's your essential fatty acids? So your omega-3s and 6s, what's your favorite sourcing with those? How do you accomplish that within those diets to maintain the milk for the pups and, you know, the sort of mental growth for them?
Well, I rotate everything and my dogs never know what's going to be in their bowl. So my omegas might be— it might be a raw egg one day, it might be cod liver oil, it might be phytoplankton, it might be krill oil, it might be Ah, you know, as many different quality sources of essential fatty acids is what I do, and I just rotate them in and rotate them out because, you know, they don't all have this exact same profile.
Yeah, for sure.
Is that how you feel too?
Yeah, I would feel that way as well.
We don't know in the States, is the same restrictions on brain material and things like that, or can you still get heads? What's What's the situation for—
Yeah, I find it very difficult to get brain over here. I did finally start selling a desiccated organ blend in my, in the dog breeder store that has brain in it and it has reproductive organs as well. Because, you know, I, I got really excited. I went to the Asian market this weekend and they had uterus for sale. I bought it all. I had like, you know, 100 pounds of uterus in there. I'm feeding, you know, breeding dogs, and I want to make sure that they're eating the organs that they need to stay healthy.
So did you try, um, did you try separate out the organs and serve them as in like, what do you want, girls? Do you want a bit of spleen, uterus, or heart? And let them pick. And, and so they will happily go for uterus, and they will happily— you were saying spleen is up the top of the list, which is interesting. There's not like— it's not like spleen is in every raw dog food. It's not an organ that's— you see all the time on the label, you know, it's liver, kidney, heart. Yeah, but there you go, the dog's going for the spleen first. That's so interesting. And you're giving blood, you're way ahead. I mean, very few people think of that great ingredient. You can buy it dry online, folks. You type in dry blood, butchers use it. That's how we over here, we eat a lot of black pudding, which is like a sausage with extra blood. And, uh, it's delicious. So in Europe and Scandinavia, they're mad into eating blood as well, but, uh, people don't feed it to their dogs. And because the meats we feed dogs have been bled, you know, while meat looks red and there's a tiny bit of hemoglobin in the muscle and everything else, I'm sure actual blood is like everything ready to go. The animal has converted every bit, it's just coursing through that. I mean, the Maasai Mara drink quantities of it, and they're the healthiest people on the planet. There has to be something into it. So blood is a fantastic ingredient. With that, with the blood and those ingredients, do you separate that out and you put it on the food, or do you give it to the dog in a little bowl, or how do you serve that?
Well, most breeders have experienced the fact that a girl who has just had babies will not take care of herself. Most of them are only focused on trying to take care of the babies, so they don't feed themselves, they don't drink, and You have to put it right up next to their mouth to get them to eat. Sometimes you have to gently force-feed them. You have to drag them outside to get them to go use the bathroom and come back in. So I have these big syringes. They're like 60 mL syringes. And there we go, metric.
Yeah, thank you.
And, and so I will fill them full of blood and then just put them in the side of their mouth and let them swallow. And if I put it in a bowl right in front of them, they very often, they're too worried about their puppies that they won't even take a drink on their own.
What about bone broth, Paula? Do you use any bone broth?
I do bone broth. I like organ juices better for this situation because they're just so packed with micronutrients. And at the Asian market, they had pork blood for sale in these little containers. And so I bought some of that because I was on—
and when you say organ juice, is that where you, where you get the organs and you blitz them down so that you've made a smoothie, or is this just the juice that runs off from the abattoir?
It's just the juice that runs off.
Okay.
So when we have our meat co-op and we buy a case of, uh, kidneys, for example, when we open them up, we'll just decant all the juices off and freeze them.
Wow.
Save them for later. They're very, very good for sick dogs and very good for moms that are lactating.
So, the juice or the organs?
The juice. Okay.
That's a goodie.
That's interesting because when you're, when you're sick, you know, food is not on the menu for you. You don't want food. So you resort to beef broth or some sort of nutritious liquid that you can think of and sneak it fish oil tablet or some bits and pieces in. But that's a great idea. I can't— as an ex-manufacturer, I can't see where I'm going to get organ juice. I'm not going to go to the butcher and ask for that. He's not going to know. So that is one of the advantages of buying in bulk, that you get to deal with those bits and pieces.
Yeah, but you say that, Conor, but I guess if you've got a really good relationship with your butcher, because those guys, they're just going to throw it down the sink.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you just say, guys, I'll give you a quid a bucket. Yeah, just put it in the bucket. I'll come and pick it up twice a week. And you put that in the freezer or wherever you're going to put it, and you're good to go. Yeah, if you've got a good butcher. Paula, I was going to ask you about sourcing, because some, uh, in Europe, we've, we're very kind of squeaky clean about, uh, trying to avoid CAFO. Meat, yeah, concentrated animal feed operations. These are, these are the, the, the store-fed, the, the, the feeding lot cattle, the battery chickens. And you guys use chlorinated— you chlorinate your chickens as well. Is, is that an issue? Can you get hold of, like, clean meat, or is that not something you're able to do? I'm interested to hear. Your thoughts?
Well, we have a lot, we still have a lot of small farmers here. I'm in Texas and there are a lot of small farmers around here. So we can get grass-fed, grass-finished meat. You know, I've had my own flock of chickens for a long time. And, you know, they eat better than we do. So, yeah, but You know, if, if a, if somebody can't afford that, then I always suggest, you know, start wherever you can, you know, start with stockyard meat if you have to and just detox your puppy, detox your puppies periodically. So, and that's part of what we do too here is we detox before the dogs are bred. So we detox all their secreting organs. We do homeopathic detoxing. There's all kinds of ways to detox. But I always do that before I breed.
And so what other ways is there aside from homeopathics? I mean, are you using things like spirulina and clays and that kind of thing? Bentonite clay is great.
Yeah, I like a product that Adored Beasts makes called Liver Tonic. Okay, yeah, it's actually quite tasty. You know, most of the herbs for detoxing are kind of acrid, difficult to swallow. So the dogs will eat that up like crazy. So, you know, and a lot of the— a lot of the— we have some great doctors here with websites like Dr. Tobias and Adored Beast and Four Leaf Rover, Mercola, that have some great products that you know, we can use with dogs even if they're labeled for humans and vice versa. I mean, I use a lot of the products that are labeled for dogs with us.
So yeah, for sure.
What about the issue of moms with worms and passing worms onto pups? Do you worm count? Do you do fecal checks on the pups? How do you control the wormy bit?
Well, Traditional breeders usually worm the moms before they're bred. And then they start giving chemical wormers at around 2 to 3 weeks of age. And they're giving them every week or so. I've had friends who have had puppies die from that. I had a friend who lost 2 really nice Boxer puppies by giving them Pyrantel Pamoate, which is supposed to be pretty benign. But The worms are getting resistant to the chemical wormers. So they don't work. And they're also toxic. I mean, they pass through the milk to the moms. I see breeders that are using chemical wormers on pregnant moms. And I'm just aghast. I just want to go, please don't do that. So I don't worm unless I know there's an overload of parasites because parasites are normal. It's the only time they're a problem is if there is a high population of them and it's causing negative symptoms. And if it's not, if that's not happening, then I don't worry about it. I mean, we have hookworm here in Houston because it's very wet. And so hookworm eggs are, I always see hookworm eggs on my microscope. I have a little, you know, little lab of my own. So I'll run my own fecals. And if I see hookworm eggs, I'm counting them. I'm looking on the slide, I'm counting, you know, if it's obliterated with eggs, then I know I've probably got an issue. But if there's a few, you know, 50 of them or something, I just keep an eye on it. And so I use homeopathics, I'll use essential oils judiciously, and I'll feed diatomaceous earth. But a good quality raw diet will keep parasite populations down.
Yeah, I bet, I bet that's the truth. All right, Brian has just disappeared there for some reason. Yes, that is interesting. I've never seen him do that before because he's, he's the technical one.
That looks like something's run out of batteries or something like that.
Yeah.
