Dr. Conor Brady and Bren discuss fermentation for pets with guest Billy Hulkmann, covering homemade fermented foods, commercial products like Lewis Fermented Golden Paste and Green Juju, and how fermented foods increase microbiome diversity in dogs and cats. They share how to ferment at home using a 2% salt brine at pH below 4.6, and discuss fecal microbial transplant capsules as an experimental tool for gut health.
Chapters
What's up?
Oh yes, well, let me just check where we're live on Facebook because that's the, the most important bit.
This must be the only platform where like we get IBS every time we turn it on and we hope that it works. I mean, at this day and age, why can't we just— and I'm not, I'm not slagging off, Greg, because you do all the work, as you say, you do all the techno, uh, technological stuff. But, uh, this just breaks your heart every time we turn it on.
It does.
I know I say this all the time, but I miss all the comments coming down the side. Is that ever going to come back? No. Am I ever going see those comments?
Oh no, you have to go into Facebook. Sorry. Okay, you really have to go to Facebook, or people have to go on to, um, YouTube. YouTube and join us on YouTube, and then it's going to be much better there. So, you know.
Okay, so guys, uh, we are Raw Pet Medics, two of the three. Nick is not here this week. He is off, um, gallivanting. He has to spend the money somehow, so he takes a ferocious amount of very expensive holidays. It's how he does it. So, um, he is enjoying that, and I think he put up a little video on Patreon. You us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics, uh, for the price of a cup of tea, and you get the extra little bit on the side which we do each week and a few other bits and pieces we pop up there. So we appreciate that support. If you can, it's great. If you can't, no sweat, we're going to be here anyway as we are every week because we love it and talking to people like Billy Hulkmann, who is in the big screen on the left-hand side. But before we get kicked off, uh, Bren, anything too much?
Well, before we do too much, I'm just working dramatically here to try and save the differences and if we can actually get this working properly.
So, okay, shall I just get chatting to Billy?
Yeah, you just, you just keep chatting because the people on YouTube will be seeing us. So, okay, perfect.
Well, listen, um, so Bren and Nick are big ferment enthusiasts, and, uh, they— I was, I was actually for a good while, I was in the middle, but my legs were definitely pointing over there. I couldn't give— I don't know anything about fermentation, and that's it. Now I'm on the fence because we spoke about it once, and The guys definitely brought me over to the middle. My big thing was like fermented foods, you know, they were saying, well, there's fermentation in the intestines. And what brought me over to the middle was a recent video of a dog eating the fermented contents of, of deer. Was it Bren? Who was that Scandinavian lady?
Yes, it was. Yeah. Wonderful lady.
Yeah.
You've actually converted.
I actually— well, I say converted, but I'm just— but I'm being generous. But I was— I have no problem holding my hands up because you hear, Billy, the background story is that I said there will never be a video of a dog eating the stomach contents of a roe deer, of anything that eats a ton load of grass. Who wants to eat that for a meal? And then, um, so a lady sent me a video of a deer that had been brought down and stomach contents of the deer, the dog goes up and eats it and he seems to quite enjoy it.
So the first rule, never say never. I know, I know, and being recorded.
So yeah, I'm just used to talking to about 5 or 6 people listening, and now as the reach slowly increases, people will hold you to task. So that's the first time. If anybody else has videos out there of dogs eating contents, particularly the fore end of the gut, so stomach contents or even intestinal contents where there might be more gloop to poo depending on where you're going in the intestines. Do send them in. I have no problem holding my hand up. So that would be a fermentation chamber in the rumen. So now I'm right in the middle. So can you just start us off with a very— I'm sure you've given this spiel as the kind of face of fermentation. I'm sure you've given this spiel 1,000 times, but for the benefit of the half of people that know nothing about fermentation, including me, Can you just give us a quick bit of spiel about what the hell is fermentation at home? What fermentation products, fermented products do we see in the supermarket? What's normal fermentation?
Yeah, well, I think there's a lot of types of fermentation, but as we're talking about it, we're not talking about, you know, beer and wine and things like that for dogs necessarily.
So not yet, Billy. Yeah, I'm sure you're going to do that. Yeah, good idea.
But so for me, it really comes down to, you know, there's a lot of definitions. You know, if you look at, say, the FDA's definition of fermentation, it's anything below 4.6 pH because they're looking at the safety definition. But I really look at it just as bacteria preprocessing food. So in any, in any sense of the word. So whether that's wild fermentation, which I think you're more talking about with stomach contents or what they would get through nature, or whether it's inoculating it with a specific strain, say in yogurt or kefir or you know, whey fermented sauerkraut versus wild fermented sauerkraut. It's essentially just preprocessing the food and then letting those bacteria proliferate. And as they proliferate, they're going to continue to preprocess the food. So it's kind of doing this the first step for you. A good example of that would be we have a product called Lewis Fermented Golden Paste. And so we take the whole root and we wild ferment it. So all we're doing is adding salt to it. To bring down the pH initially. And then as those bacteria that are naturally existing in the turmeric themselves start to grow, the pH lowers even more. And the whole time they're eating it. So like if the active ingredient in turmeric is curcumin, now if you were to eat curcumin or your dog or cat was to eat curcumin, what would happen is you would break it down into metabolites and it would go into your bloodstream and work. In this case, the bacteria actually do that for you. They actually eat the turmeric and break down the curcumin into metabolites and make it easier to absorb. So it's kind of like initiating the first process and then getting the benefit of all of the bacteria that are, you know, the bacterial growth is kind of a byproduct, which is really nice.
That's interesting. I saw, I saw fermented turmeric recently. And so fermentation is going way beyond just talking about foods. And we'll we'll come back to those vitamins and minerals. Brian, you were going to say something there. I can see it's at the tip of your tongue. What were you going to say?
Oh yeah. So, I mean, it's really interesting that the amount of nutrients that these bacteria are producing. So all of the postbiotics that lots of people are talking about now, it's not just about the bacteria and furnishing our guts with those bacteria. It's actually all of the beneficial nutrients they're creating from that ferment that are also going into that food. So we're not, you know, you're almost predigesting it and producing other things as far as I understand it, which is great for our pets as well as for us. I love these things, but my personal experience is not the same as yours, is it, Conor? You have personal issues with various Brewed products.
Yeah, I just— I mean, whatever about my actual issues with some beers, but I did try fermentation at home. I tried two different types of things. I tried making my own kefir, disaster. I don't— how could you make a mess of kefir? That, um, what went wrong with that, I can't remember. Either it tasted fizzy and sour, which I was told that's a good— that's good.
Yeah, yeah.
I was like, this is kefir? Oh, okay. I totally had the wrong idea of what it was. I thought, oh, this has gone off. That's what it tastes like.
So, um, one time my wife was like, do we really need 7 projects going on at once? I'm like, we do, actually. You're married to me, so that's your house. It's your fault you married me.
So there you go. She was attracted to the fermentation of the— and so is your house Bubble bubble, toil and trouble. Is there all bits and pieces being fermented like a cat in a tube over here and something else? And what's here?
Yeah, we, you know, it's really fun because, you know, if you look at— so for instance, the mushroom probiotic that we just released, that started in my kitchen. It— I tooled through fermentation of mushroom, wild fermentation of mushrooms, actually really it's difficult. Um, uh, just like turmeric is much more difficult than, say, um, uh, beets or something like that. Um, but so it starts in my kitchen, and then we kind of like, uh, scale it up from there. Now, when I say scale it up, I mean the stuff that— because that just hit the market, and the stuff that's actually out there is fermented by one Amish guy, and then two Amish guys put it into the bottle. So, you know, it's— everything's done sort of, uh, on farm. But I also do a lot just for I guess my family. So I make raw Greek yogurt for Emily. I brew about a gallon and a half of kombucha a week. It's kind of my fun. It's what I do for my hobby anyway. So like, it kind of spills over.
Who's Emily, Billy?
That is my wife.
Emily is your wife. Okay. And what about you have a 3-year-old as well. Is it, is there any kind of limitations to who eats fermented products? Does your 3-year-old turn her nose up at some of the bits and pieces? Natural sour fizzy yogurt, for example, the way I did when I tasted it? Uh, does it change?
You know, she actually— the funny thing is she doesn't. So we've been feeding her like weird stuff since she was basically born, and— or since she could eat food, um, at 6 months. And so she doesn't turn— she does weirdly— she doesn't love, uh, yogurt, like dairy-based yogurt, but she does love like raw coconut yogurt and that kind of thing. But She will also just eat like a whole tin of sardines in one sitting. And her— my, my, uh, bragging thing is her favorite food is raw milk with cod liver oil in it. Oh my God, that is amazing. She has that every morning, um, before she goes to—
gross, gross, but amazing.
Amazing. Absolutely. Don't, don't get put off. There is an experiment in the 1920s, you know, where these kids would just absolutely guzzle down loads of cod liver oil. And then they would just get to that point where they say, no, I've got enough now, switch off and stop drinking it. So don't get put off if that happens.
I'll go as long as I can.
And I don't know. That study was so amazing. Nick brings it up all the time, that 1920 study, Billy. And I don't have the details of it, but essentially they took these kids and said, right, we're going to let you feed ad lib on these different foods. So these kids would go from not wanting cod liver oil to suddenly when they're allowed feed ad lib, they ended up taking cod liver oil and taking quite a lot until they were satiated and they'd stop after 3, 4, 5 days, almost like animal zoo pharmacology in action. You know, it's like, I've enough of that, I don't want any more, which happens with lots of foods. And, and that's so cool. So the fact that your 3-year-old is eating that, that is pretty impressive. That is a really good diet. Where do you get raw milk from, do you mind me asking? Because raw milk is trickier to get. So do you get to buy it or do you have a pal?
Well, I did want to say, too, there is actually a study as well that shows that women who are pregnant that consume cod liver oil have higher IQ children than—
I don't doubt that.
Yeah. I mean, it makes perfect sense given the makeup of the brain, etc. So we, we live— I live in Pennsylvania. And, and raw milk is very, very legal in Pennsylvania. So I can actually just buy it at a grocery store or at a small little market. I'm at a coworking space now and there's a little nice organic market right around the corner and they have raw cow's milk, raw goat's milk. And it actually really helps, you know, Green Juju because all of our milk that we sell all around the country. So raw milk is illegal when you try to go over state lines with it. It's for human consumption. So the FDA made it interstate travel illegal. So we sell for pet consumption because we are a pet food company, obviously. And but we can sell for pets. But all of our milk is actually certified for human consumption in the state of Pennsylvania. So in order to get the extra safety steps, we actually go through having that. And I was, I was actually telling him before this, tomorrow I'm actually going to visit tomorrow and the next day, our 15 farms that we work with to inspect their pasture, to inspect their enclosure, their, their organic feed, etc. But for us, it's, it's a really easy thing. In fact, most of the shopping that I do outside of, you know, some of the necessities you need to get at Whole Foods, there's a lot of really great Amish farms here who have just honor system stores. So you just go into a shed there's a refrigerator, and then there's just a bin with money, and you just take whatever you want and make your own change or leave a check. Um, and it's all directly, uh, directly from the farm. So it's kind of actually like living in 1860. I was— I tell people, my, my, my, my cheesemaker who makes raw cheese, um, raised our pig that we're currently eating, and the pig was processed at our raw butter guy um, it was about 2 miles down the road. And because it was all direct to farm, so because it was— and by the way, this pork is pasture and raw way-fed pork. So because we went straight to the farm and then the processor's 3 miles down the road, the— that pork is $3 a pound. So, um, it's a nice— I don't think we can ever move from—
we're all moving to Pennsylvania.
Yeah. This is actually annoying me listening to this. It's like, oh my God. No, it's not. It's not often though. It's not often that, uh, us this side of the pond, um, get a bit jealous of, uh, the foods and meat quality, uh, no offense, in the US because a lot of the beef, almost all of the pork, CAFO-reared. And people don't understand what that is, what it looks like. It's kept off the TV in the front of the packets for a very good reason. I mean, and here you are eating well-priced meat of the highest quality that doesn't have to be shipped for central slaughtering, which has got to be one of the worst ways to go. I mean, the whole journey will be horrific, but I mean, that's just, uh, that is unbelievable. Can you tell me, if we just go back to basics here for a second, for the people that still don't understand fermentation, uh, how, what is the process involved in fermenting? Uh, I want to turn milk into yogurt. What is— is that fermentation or—
Yeah, it's milk fermentation is actually really easy. And we actually have a video on our website because our milk comes just as straight milk. So the thing in the industry right now is like, what do we add to raw milk? But raw milk is the star. Raw milk is— I have seen animals live. I have seen multiple dogs live for up to 5 years on just raw milk and water. It doesn't meet any NRC standard. It doesn't meet any AFGO profile, doesn't meet any of these things. However, the nutrients are just different, right? They all have their cofactors, etc. But so on our website we have a video of this. It's as simple as adding— so we on our, on our— sorry, I keep doing this because my thing keeps coming out. Yeah, yeah, hopefully that's not awkward. Yeah, no, but we, um, we actually partnered with Adored Beast, and I, I was texting with Julianne Lee and I was like I have this idea, you know, you pulled these certain strains out of dogs. I could ferment milk with that and it would be the first, like, dog-specific fermented raw dairy beverage.
Clever.
So, so we have that on there and you can do that with anything. And so it's, it really is as simple as using a starter culture, either kefir or yogurt or a probiotic, really any probiotic that's active that has at least 2 billion probiotics. And just put it in milk that's room temperature or out of the fridge, shake it up, and then leave it on your counter for 24 hours. And that's really the whole process. And those bacteria will become prevalent and start eating the lactose. And by the way, when you do a ferment like that, usually the lactose is reduced by about 50%, um, unless you have, uh, technically I have— I consider myself to have 4 children because I have my daughter, my dog. I have my kombucha culture, which has been alive since 2017. And then I also have—
thank you.
He's, he's my first. She's my first daughter. And then I also have a yogurt culture that's been going for about a year and a half now. And it's a different culture because it's not just a culture, but there's several different commercial yogurts in there. But there's also— so all these farms in the area, if I go to this farm and I get raw yogurt from them, right, it's going to be dependent on the yeast in the air on the farm. There's going to be a totally different culture set there. So I've also incorporated several, like, farms' raw yogurt into this culture, and I've kept it going. And it's so bitter that my wife— no one will drink it, uh, in the house except for me. But it is insanely healthy. I drink it every morning, essentially, um, because I just—
I make a lot of those. It tastes so good. I'm awful. It must be healthy.
I don't mind the taste, but other people do it and they're like, well, there's no sweetness to this. Um, but milk fermentation is like the easiest process, and all you're doing is like really pre-digesting the lactose and then adding, like he was talking about, like the postbiotic vitamins, especially B vitamins and organic acids. Um, so there's a difference between that and like wild fermentation. And I think actually, to your point earlier, wild fermentation is really like what I look for in terms of over the past, you know, 6 months or a year, I would say over the past year, year and a half, 2 years, because we have 3 wild fermented products. We have the Lewis Gold Fermented Golden Paste. We have Bam's Beets, which is beets and purple cabbage. And now this wild fermented mushroom probiotic. And what I'm really looking at is less about, oh, my dog or cat has a health issue, so here's a probiotic. And more about how do we just always increase microbiome diversity? Because that's what we're really looking for, is to increase diversity. So if you look at like our mushroom probiotic, again, all we're doing is adding salt to bring out the natural probiotics in the mushrooms and the natural yeast. So you're going to get like on average, if you look at any study that looks at wild fermented products, you're going to get like over 100 different species and different genus types of probiotics.
Interesting.
And they're going to change every bottle you use because it will depend on, you know, that's literally done at a farm in a facility. It's a, it's a room. My friend John, who's a, who's a wonderful Amish farmer, does this. And it depends on the time of year it was fermented. There's going to be different things in the air if it's winter, spring, summer, or fall. There's going to be different things on the— depends on the soil the mushrooms were grown in. So you're going to get different things every time. So my whole goal with what we're doing at Green Juju is to create that diversity. So now if you combine that with, say, raw milk, which has like 200 different— over 200 identified species of probiotics— now you're going to have like— some of those might overlap, but like 300 different species just from 2 foods.
Yeah.
And, and for me, it goes— that diversity goes back to their environment, because most of our dogs and cats— or most cats live inside 100% of the time, but most of our dogs— I live in a city, and, uh, for being a small city, Lancaster is very walkable. So my dog goes on walks in the city. He lives in our house. He doesn't go to the woods very often. He's not in the dirt. He's not eating dirt. He's not eating whole prey. So the other part about it for me is bringing environment, their evolutionary environment, back into the home. And that's through not only raw food, and the best way to do that is through fermentation. So if you're You know, I don't think a lot of animals— I think it's— I would say it's somewhat overhyped, the amount of animals who are actually sensitive to fermented foods. So I would encourage people to see what works for their own animal, but try to incorporate something in there.
The species richness bit is interesting. When they, when they looked at the blue zones of people where people live the longest, and there's 6 or 7 blue zones in the, in the world, and every continent's got one at least. And but they kind of tried to draw some conclusions from it. And one of the big standout ones was gut health, you know, and how little gut-annihilating products you eat and how little antimicrobials and preservatives you eat. And species richness came up to the top of the table. So species richness. And they started looking at it in nursing homes and they said that the elderly people that had a narrower, had less species richness were more prone to get sick and those with more species richness were less prone to get sick, less inflammation. So species These richness is really important, but we eat such narrow diets, so preserved, so ultra-processed, so cooked that we're not getting any of this in our diet. And dogs normally do when they're let off the lead, which is half the dogs let off the lead, eating plants, eating bits of muck if they're gut sick, geophagy, eating poo, you know, for all we know, it's a very strong probiotic effect and little else. We don't really know what that coprophagy is about. Yes, that's really interesting because a lot of dogs don't get that access. They don't get off the lead, they don't get the outside in at all. So yeah, that's it.
And we also see that in even in raw dogs, you know, that not all of them are getting that species diversity. And there was often a query as to, well, for carnivores, do they need that species diversity in the same effect to, you know, some, you know, a species like ourselves that are omnivorous and have the ability to ferment within our own guts as well, let alone eating fermented stuff, whereas our dogs and cats can't. So yes, they're ingesting. So I think there's a few studies out there that show actually a smaller diversity in raw-fed animals. And one queries, is that just because they are being very specifically fed a particular meat and not given the diversity we've just talked about and that variation and access to the outside in effectively. And, you know, do we get the same benefits? Do we feel for our pets? Yeah, we're working on that.
Yeah, we're working on that right now. Actually, we're working on a study with AnimalBiome because, you know, they're measuring the innate bacteria that are in the gut. So we're working with them because what they're finding is that exact thing. That raw-fed, even raw-fed dogs don't have diverse enough microbiomes or enough fiber. Because I think my own little, like, pet theory behind this is we, we made pet food with the wrong plants for so long, like soy, corn, all these things, that when we, when we swung back in the other direction, we're like, let's make healthy food, we said no plants. But that was the wrong thing, right? We need meat for what it's good for, right? Fat-soluble vitamins, fat and protein. And we plants for fiber, antioxidants, vitamins, vitamin precursors, minerals. But so what we're doing is, um, we are actually having animals test their microbiome. Then they're gonna— they're going on our Just Greens supplement, which is the first product Green Juju ever made, which is a veggie blend. So we, we actually juice the vegetables and then add the pulp back to like further break down the cell wall. And we're already getting preliminary results back that show that not only is it more diversified, but we're reducing the bad bacteria in the gut as well. And that's because it's big. It's because it's not just a supplement, right? So like we have 3 different veggie blends. If you rotate between those 3 in a month, I do 2 because my dog's ungrateful and he doesn't like one of them because he's— yeah, but of course he doesn't. But if you rotate between the 3, you'll get 17 different plants into your dog's diet. Now, that doesn't mean we're making up a majority of the diet in plants. It just means you're going to get all these different fiber types, all that, like, diversity. And listen, I think supplements can be highly effective when it comes to fiber, but I don't think it measures up to food.
I can imagine half of your customers are now, it's a spoonful for the dog and 3 spoonfuls go into my smoothie.
It does. It does smell really, really good. Especially at the plant. Um, and that was actually— and, and this is a shout out to Kelly Marion, the owner of, uh, Green Juju, who, you know, when I left my last job, I specifically sought out to work for Kelly because I saw the innovation that she was doing. But that veggie blend's been out since 2014, and it was the first product in the industry to have bone broth in it. Um, to be, uh— so she was doing that a long time ago. And actually, a really funny story about that is Um, she took that first batch to— so she was a dog walker, and she— her dog, uh, came, had a joint tumor, and she was trying to get her ready for surgery. So she was basically like, went to the pet store and couldn't find anything like Green Juju, uh, Just Greens. So she invented it, and she was giving it to her clients and seeing all these great health benefits. And a store wanted a sample of it, and Um, Kelly and I didn't really know each other at this point, but, uh, a store won a sample of it, so she said, okay, I'll bring it in. So she brings it into the employee and said, the owner wants the sample, um, you know, obviously don't sell this, just leave it for her. So the employee put it in the freezer to save it, and then about an hour later I walked in and they accidentally sold it to me. So I was actually the first Green Juju customer, uh, about 10 years ago. So yeah, I don't know if I believe in fate, but yeah, it was all part of my plan.
The veggie bit is interesting, right? So I'm wrestling with this conundrum here. So I was— there's a— there's— I love FMT, okay, which is fecal microbial transplant, crapseals, okay? So great for some— for when we've exhausted a number of avenues and what else do we do? FMT has really helped to reset some stubborn dysbiosis in the gut. So I'm a big believer, love it, particularly if it's Bren doing a colonic. That would be the best way for it to do it. And hopefully Bren's uncomfortable when that's happening, so it makes me be double. But the capsules are great. And I've been using a company from America, Animal Biome, do FMT. And there's a rival as well. And we were struggling to get Animal Biome in just for a little while, get it across the pond. Shipping capsules is, you know, can be hit and miss. Anyway, yeah, it's difficult. And it was difficult for a lot of clients that were using them. But anyway, good company. So anyway, I'm using another person and the person's dogs are vegan fed. Now, I was only told that after I'd been using them for 4 or 5 months. I said, look, they arrive and it's great and there's no issues and they're great, use that. And it was working for a number of clients. So now I'm wrestling in my head saying, what use is a vegan biome to a gut sick dog with an upset biome? And then we're talking about fermented veggies and we're talking about the biome from that. So I was confused thinking, first of all, we're talking about aerobic bacteria, aren't we, in this fermented veggie kind of mix? So Lactobacillus, Bifido, those sort of groups. So does it really matter what we're fermenting? Like if you're doing beets and, you know, does it— like, I thought as a meat eater it would have to be fermented meat and the biome that the meat eater needs. So I'm just thinking meat, meat, meat all the time. But we're fermenting veggies and using the biome from that is like when we feed this ferment, you know what I'm trying to say? When we feed fermented veggies, we will shift the biome of the dog, you know, and that's going to help when you're gut sick, I assume. Is there a question in here or am I just confused?
Well, I would add back in before Billy, I'd love to hear what Billy wants to say about this. But for me, that fermentation, those herbivores are truly living off that ferment. They're not living off the plant.
Plants.
Yeah, you know, you're feeding the gut flora. So effectively, if you are providing a ferment, you're not necessarily feeding plant material per se to a carnivore. You're feeding a bacterial ferment, which is nutrient-rich. Yeah, plus there is a diverse gut flora. So for me, I feel really comfortable because I see animals all the time. It's only Conor that doesn't see this because not really in the real world, um, where that will eat the gut of animal prey, um, and, you know, certainly in my environment, if there's a rabbit down, the whole thing goes, you know. If I'm, you know, got a fresh goat, you know, then again, that may be that all of the gut the dogs will take, you know, they'll eat all of the, um, the rumen, the lot, you know, will, will be picked at, um, and I think I see it as there is that improved diversity. Where do you come at that from, Billy? Do you feel that actually, no, there's more to it in the plant nutrients that are going in?
Yeah. Well, well, first I'd like to say I'm very familiar with the capsules. I actually fermented some fecal transplant capsules into milk and it worked too well. It was the grossest thing. In the world. So it was very, very viable.
So just to explain that to people, so this is cool, this is cool. So you took the— so you took the crab seal, which is dried desiccated poo, and then you put that into a glass of milk, let's say, on the counter, and you open them up and they wake up because they've been freeze-dried. And once the moisture hits them, takes them a few minutes, they wake up and they eat the milk. So are you, are you in essence multiplying the crab seal into a larger— for people listening on podcast, I'm trying to say, does the capsule suddenly become half a liter of poo juice?
Well, what happened? What happened with this particular one? So I did this. I did this at home. And yeah, and I did it. I did it not on the counter. I did it in a— basically it's a yogurt maker, but it's basically a water bath that keeps it at 100 degrees. So it gives you more consistent ferment, right? So I did it in that and it was really—
Fahrenheit for all of the people in the UK.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Not boiling.
That's a good point.
Yes. Thank you for that. So essentially a lot of times when I'm doing my own yogurt, it's a really good ferment. So the lid of this thing will kind of start popping off because of the fact that the bacteria are breathing, right? They're producing using CO2 and it's coming out. So after like 4 hours, this thing, the lid was like almost coming off this thing, and I kept pressing it back down. And I was like, I went over to it, we were watching TV, and I was like, I just gotta go check this out, this seems strange to me. So I went, I went ahead and, and opened it up, and Emily could hear me talking to myself in the room, and I said, no one should ever do this, this is a mistake. And no, but, but it But it turned— it turned— I've never seen this with a ferment before, which shows just how viable these capsules are. It turned into solidified cheese in like 6 hours. And so what does that mean? Can we—
have you, have you magnified these drugs that cost money? These capsules cost big cash. Yeah. Have you just made an entire block of capsule cheese?
No, I can tell you what you could do. And you could do this. Anyone could do this watching this with, say, Green Juju milk. Now, keep in mind, the initial thing I made smelled really bad.
So it's not like you're like, oh, okay, this is like it come out the back end of a dog.
But what you could do is you could take that first batch and just take a small sample out of it and then inoculate another milk and then that's going to grow into this really thick yogurt or cheese-like substance. And then you could take a small sample of that and you could do it again and you could— and I would imagine by about 5 different ferments later, you have probably now actually diluted out what would make that kind of gross. And now you just have the bacteria from those capsules growing. Now, I wasn't willing to do that because I was like, I need to get this out of my house as quickly as possible. But you could do that. And I would imagine— I was thinking to myself, boy, this would be really healthy for a dog.
Like, great products.
Yeah, that's not gonna happen. Kelly, if you're watching this, I didn't say that.
Chocolate milk for dogs.
This is cool.
This is, this is really interesting.
You could put Winnie in front of that, it'd be fine. It'd sell really well.
Yeah, I do want to say going back to your question, I definitely see— so even in our veggie blends, so our veggie blends are not fermented, right? This is where you're getting the fiber source itself. But the fact that we, you know, Kelly initially saw all of those health benefits and it was a myriad of health benefits, it wasn't just digestion, it was more energy, it was, you know, better skin and coat. It was, it was a lot of different things that she was looking at. And I think that comes from the fact that we actually juice them, which completely breaks down the cell wall, keeps it in a raw food state, and then add the pulp back so it's the whole food altogether. So I definitely know that they're getting all of those, you know, vitamins that plants are good for, right? Some of those— a lot of those water-soluble vitamins, um, that we look at. So like, for me, the perfect combination is our fermented products or the milk with those veggie ones, because then you have that co— you know, that relationship where they feed on each other. Because you can feed as many probiotics as you want. I mean, for instance, I do, um, for my own diet, I drink a lot of kombucha, I eat my yogurt.
I—
when I travel, I take a travel sort of probiotic. But all of that, you know, there has to be fiber there or else it's really good.
Sorry, Brian, you go first.
All right, so with regards to that, you, you talked about the, the wonderful farming that you've got locally to you, you know, with rearing animals, you know, producing milk, all of those side of things. For the veggies, because this is really interesting because the microbiome of the soil is so important for producing excellent nutrients within those veggies, is it the same thing? Are you getting those veggies locally when you're creating for Green Juju? Is that something that is part of the ethos of the company, or is veggies slightly further afield.
So that's a great point, and I will, uh, tell you about a study that was really interesting done on mice, um, that were, that were, uh, sort of bred to have like a particular protein allergy, um, or, or sorry, an egg protein allergy. Um, and so they actually, they had 3 different groups, and the first one they just fed them egg protein, and obviously they saw the, the bad effects of that. So the second one, they actually fed that group, um, the egg protein covered with soil from a monoculture farm. So, you know, something that's just— where I grew up in Wisconsin, in, in the U.S., it's like, we do corn and that's it, right? So same thing, egg allergy to the same effects. And then the third group, they fed what they called Amish dust, which was from a polyculture farm, which is plants, animals, different animal types, no allergy to the egg protein. Yeah. And so these, these mice then had no allergy to the egg protein.
Did they have the egg protein sitting in this soil for a while? Did they ferment the egg protein in the soil for a while, like, or did they just mix it in?
And as far as I know, they just mixed it in and they were just consuming that dirt with it. So So if you look at— so our veggie blends primarily come from Washington and Oregon. So that is the same sort of organic produce that you'll get, you know, at Whole Foods or, you know, your organic grocery store. All of our everything. So we make most of our products actually in Salem, Oregon. But we— the products that come out of Pennsylvania are the milk and the 3 fermented products. and that's about an hour and 15 minutes north where I live. So all the mushrooms come from a farm, organic farm, that's about 40 minutes south of me. And then, um, the turmeric actually comes from Florida, um, and that one's actually funny because it's the turmeric— we do the whole root, we don't do powder— and it's the turmeric that's too ugly for Whole Foods. So they just, um, so it's the same turmeric, it's just humans don't use it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, um All of our, uh, beets and purple cabbage come from, uh, Lancaster Farm Fresh Co-op. So when I go to Whole Foods in my town here, it's the same beautiful organic purple cabbage. But your point is— so the reason I said that about that study with the mice is the soil microbes are only healthy when there's animals on the farm. And so it does depend, but— and that's the coolest part about the diversity is the fact that you have, um, uh, you know, in our— so Bam's Beets is 50% beets and 50% purple cabbage. So it depends on— every one of those, uh, heads of cabbage is going to be different. It depends on did that farm have chickens on it, did that farm have, you know, X, Y, and Z. And that's the cool thing about the diversity, but you just don't get that same thing without— that's the ironic thing is like people who don't want to eat animals, like, but you need animals that people have traditionally ate on that farm to make the plants healthy. In fact, there was a study that just came out, um, in human nutrition that showed that humans are in urban areas are actually losing the ability to digest plants. And it's because some of the microbes that we have in our stomach for digesting plants are there because we're around cows and we're around animals that can actually digest. We, we all share bacteria. A good, a good point of that, and I talk about this a lot, is everyone you live in a house with— your, your family, your dog— you all share bacteria by virtue of living in the same house. You all share gut bacteria. Um, and so, you know, a lot of those gut— a lot of those, uh microbes were migrating from those farm animals. And so now that we've lived in cities for so long, this, this is what the study was showing. So I think it's kind of, you know, a similar—
that's interesting. Um, I've just thought of a good question. First of all, Kaz Ling is there. Hey Kaz, you say hi? I can just see some of the comments on the right-hand side. So Kaz is a client of mine, so good stuff for joining us. I've got a, I've got a question. Um, a lot of the food poisoning incidents that happen come from leafy greens, uh, carrots being eaten raw because of the slurry they spray in the field which comes from, you know, not so good happy pigs and whatnot. And so we have this issue. So if I'm fermenting veg at home, and I would like some tips on how to do that because when I tried it, it was absolutely rotten, it definitely wasn't right. So I want to hear some tips on that. But what happens to bad bacteria that ferment up? I mean, if you have veg that isn't great, not everyone has access to Penn State kind of veg here at the moment. So what happens if they take veg that isn't perfectly clean and then they ferment that up, are they going to ferment up the bad guys too, or the good guys outcompete them?
You should— if you do it— fermentation, you know, isn't— it's hard to screw up to the point where you would do something dangerous is what I mean. Like you could, you could take it and be like, I don't want to eat this because it seems weird. But like, here's a, here's a really good example of that. When I started brewing, I think you asked what kombucha is, but when I started brewing kombucha, which is— it's fermented green and green, green and black tea or fermented black tea. So when I started brewing kombucha, I was struggling getting carbonation. And a mentor of mine, Jacqueline, who unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago, she said, oh, don't wash the vessel because you need that residual yeast to build up. So lo and behold, I haven't washed my kombucha vessels since 2017.
Jesus.
And I, and I, and I brew it, and I know, and I brew every week. And so the whole point of it is the pH goes down to like 3-something in kombucha, right? And so the point is that those bad bacteria can't grow. They have a very, very difficult time. So if you're, if you're fermenting your vegetables and you're doing a wild ferment with salt, as long as your pH is below 4 4.6, but usually if you're doing that, it gets down to like below 4.
Yeah. Okay.
You're not— the bad bacteria can't really survive.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're good.
The pH bit was a trick that some of the raw— well, it, it was a thing that we were told when you were making pet food. This is 10, 15 years ago. Oh, we're trying to think of ways. Okay, listen, how do you protect against microbial kind of onslaught here dealing with raw meat? And one of the guys' solutions who worked in the meat industry said, oh, you can just pump in a lot of vitamin C or something to drop the pH. And I was like, you what? Yeah, ascorbic acid or something else to drop. And I said, why is that? And he goes, oh, you just have to do a little bit because the bad bacteria have— they're quite picky, as it turns out, and they like a certain pH. So that's interesting. That's cool. And just for the last 5 minutes, did we do a thing called Bit on the Side? I'm actually just after getting a message, guys. I'm going to have to dash in 5 minutes. So you'll have to do just Bit on the Side, which is just 10 more minutes with Bren, if you can tolerate speaking to Bren without me present. Yeah. Sorry, Bren. Didn't mean to say that to you publicly. I was trying to text No, it's all right. I get it all the time.
I'm stacking my questions because you always get yours in.
Yeah, yeah. The kombucha. I love kombucha and my friend makes it and yeah, and I love the whole process to jar at home. And what should people start on just for people that don't get on to bid on the site? Where would people start if they wanted to get into fermenting something beyond making milk tea yogurt? Although that could be kind of cool. Where would it be the very first place you'd start? What's your recommendation for it? Look, guys, just try this. Grate a bit of onion, grate a bit of beetroot, water, salt. What do I do just to get one basic mix going that might taste nice?
Yeah, I mean, that's pretty easy. You just do a 2% salt brine, which means, you know, you just do your math to figure out what you're— what to get it to 2%. For me, you can just put it in a jar, put the lid on and shake it up to kind of get the salt mixed in and then put your vegetables in and make sure they stay below the brine. And, you know, and you can either put a cabbage leaf on top or, you know, for me, I use a weight. You can buy fermentation weights online. So just, you know, put a weight in there and then usually within 7 days you'll have fermented vegetables. You know, I'll tell people about kombucha too when it comes to brewing that on your own. You know, I've been doing it for a long time, but I brew a gallon and a half a week. It takes me a half an hour. More. And I make, uh, I make actually whatever Emily— whatever flavor she wants at any given time. But typically that's like pomegranate or blueberry. And it takes me half an hour a week, and it saves so much money when it comes to— kombucha is not cheap. Yeah, no, no. Um, all you have to pay for is the tea, the sugar, and then whatever you're flavoring it with. Um, so these things, they just take a little bit of time to sort of get in the groove with and then work. I will tell a quick funny story that Emily was kind of getting into sourdough recently and she kind of wanted it to be her project. And I was like, you know, I've never done sourdough, but I do know a little bit about fermentation. I could probably help you. And she was like, no, no, I want this. And it was so hard for me not to be like, yeah, I want to just— I don't—
be careful, that'll be your fifth child.
Yeah.
That's exactly right. Yeah.
So can I over-ferment veg if I leave it in the fridge? I didn't get to my fermenting stuff. I made kimchi. I thought it was kimchi. I just made it up and put apples in and put all sorts of things in. It was beautiful-looking beets that I grew myself, yellow and pink and white. There was candy beets, they're called. They're beautiful. So it looked the part. Carrots, some sesame seeds. I thought, I can't wait to eat this. But I left it in there for about a month because every time I looked at it, I thought, the water looks a little bit brown. It doesn't look like And eventually I ate a big spoonful of it and thought, can't eat too much of that. Did I, did I stew it for too long? Can you stew it for too long?
Did you have it in the fridge?
Yeah, I had it in the fridge. That was a stupid idea.
So you want to have it on the counter in order for those bacteria to really get active. They have to be at room temperature.
So there's my first problem. There we go.
So the second thing, and then once you— so the other thing to consider is above 10 degrees or but you know, I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna go in Fahrenheit. Um, so that's going to be 60 to 70 degrees, just whatever your home is. Yeah.
Okay.
Um, 70 is great. Um, the other thing you can do is you can buy, like, anywhere— um, I have like a pH meter, but you can just buy like a pH strip and you can just dip that in and, um, it'll tell you when it's ready. So any, you know, once it's below and then you just put it in your fridge and it's good for a really long time. But you have to get that initial on the counter. Yeah, it's the same thing. It's the same thing with kombucha. I do a second ferment with the flavoring, which is like 3 days after I had the blueberry juice, and then I put it in the fridge and that slows down the process. Because if I was to open that up after that at room temperature, it would shoot out of there. But once you put it in the fridge and get it cooled down, the bacteria kind of mellow out and it'll still be really fizzy. But, and I, I would encourage people, like, it's really easy once you just actually start doing it. Like, once you get into a little bit of a groove, it's— people have been doing it forever. I mean, it's, it's how people—
and just, and just tell the guys out there the importance of getting it, the weighted below the liquid level. What's the— there is an important reason.
Oh yeah. So in the brine is going to be the correct environment to lower the pH and get it to where, where the good bacteria start growing. If anything's sticking out of the brine, that's just then rotten. Yeah, there's just territory for it to be just— yeah, it's rotting. That's a good point.
Okay, I'm going to be careful that I really want to make kombucha. She had a beautiful jar, it had lovely little prints on it, and then that rotten little scummy kind of top on it, the smeg or whatever it's called. And it tastes— scoby. Yeah, not smeg, scoby. And when you taste it, it's a bit of an acquired taste at the start. Like, it's not going to taste taste like green tea. It's not gonna taste like disgusting fruit juices that we're used to drinking from supermarkets and shit like that. It's just poison full of sugar. But it is delicious and it does feel good. Like, you drink a large glass, it does feel good. And so there's definitely something to it. But the kombucha you buy in the shops is pasteurized. So is there any—
not here though.
Oh, definitely over here because we're not allowed to sell raw drinks. So it's all pasteurized. What's the point?
There is no point. There's a couple of brands here that do that, but there's a really good one called GT's, which, you know, I actually have a little thing on. I don't know if it's on their website or not, but I did a basic thing with Judy Morgan for basically fermenting berries with kombucha. And it's— that process is really just putting berries in a glass jar and covering them with kombucha for a day to 3 days on the counter. And then you're going to get that really fast-acting sort of pre-digestion. But the other thing about kombucha that's really kind of cool is, you know, you get the same like 100, over 100 species of good yeast, which I think really helps to crowd out bad yeast and, and that bacteria. But there was a recent study in humans that showed that the, the specific bacteria set in kombucha actually acts as like sort of makes the body go into fasting. So it showed that it helped to kind of metabolize and help people lose weight.
Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, the guys, I've got to bounce. I'm so sorry. I can hear it.
Well, um, so I would say to everybody out there, you know, great that you've joined us. Thank you so much, Billy. We're going to be moving over to, um, the patreon.com/rawpetmedics. So patreon.com/rawpetmedics, you can catch the last bit, uh, of questions and some great information. I love this. Yeah, it's been a passion of mine for a couple of years and we've been putting it on hold because of the man down there.
Yeah, I've been ruining it. I don't know why. It's because I didn't know. It's because I don't know anything about it.
And so, well, we're going to talk all about the deaminase oxidase that can have an issue that if you don't process the histamines and stuff properly why you can sometimes react to some histamine-rich bacteria which are in some ferments.
So, yes, so that's just jokes on you because you got to miss that, Conor.
I need to hear about this.
He's gonna have to watch it later.
No, seriously, I was like, make sure to ask Billy about that shit. Okay, you do that and let me know. Okay, Bill, I will talk to you. Am I going to see you in the States? Are you going to see in Florida, San Diego?
Yeah, yeah, me and Kelly will both be at, uh, in Florida.
Great. Okay, cool. Judy Morgan. Okay, we'll see you there, guys. Ben, cheers, thanks for that. And, uh, Billy, I will see you down the road. Cheers.
Okay, great.
Take care, everyone.
