my bf feeds his dog pasta

[pastadog]

hi namechanged. i don’t live with my bf btw!
when i go round his house, i obviously see him feeding his dogs. most of the time, he has pots of uneaten pasta from the night before. this will usually have meat, tomato sauce etc on it. he puts a lot on top of their usual dog food, they seem healthy enough and i guess ‘back then’ people would feed their dogs their scraps, but this just seems a bit wrong?
not looking for advice etc just wanted to know if i’m right in thinking he shouldn’t do this?

Our hens used to come into the kitchen and eat the cat food. Obviously not a good idea, but they were crafty about it.

@SweetPetrichor

Our leftovers used to go to the hens. They eat anything and everything, although we did feel a bit guilty if it was chicken curry leftovers. We didn’t collect or use the eggs, so no concerns there, they were just pets. The dogs would get most meaty leftovers, and things like the dripping, which they loved.

Mammals can sense chilli but most other creatures can’t, so don’t fret about the hens eating curry. Capsaicin is a plant’s defence against mammals eating fruit and seeds when they want birds or invertebrates to do so.

Today the bin-mouths ate the rather wilted spinach that was too old for us to fancy it.

Hen fight. Hen fight!🙈

Big thumbs up to those trying to educate the 'backyard keepers', you might as well bang your head against a wall. Animal health/TS can and do visit any premises if someone draws their attention and if last night's spag bol was in your coop when they arrived you'd be saying bye bye to your hens PDQ (and not to a sanctuary either).

It's NOT just about the food chain so it doesn't absolve you of your responsibilities if you don't ever eat the eggs- also, newsflash, if you eat them, they're in the food chain. It's also about the health of the national population of that species, see: bird flu lockdown regs that also applied to all.

@SchrodingersImmigrant

Hen fight. Hen fight!🙈

Wait until we get onto making marmite and mealworm porridge for them in winter…

Well, you can do that, as long as you don't make the porridge in your own kitchen (camping stove in the shed is a great workaround!) and you get the mealworms from a Defra approved source, good luck with that one. But you know that already, don't you.

My cat loves pasta!

My dog loves watermelon, strawberry trifle and popadoms

This weekend doggo (huge skinny lurcher. Often mistaken for a wolf (by children) or a wolfhound (adults) has variously had sausages, bacon, roast chicken, a couple of rounds of buttered toast, rice, a cheese sandwich (made and fed to him by the 5 year old when nobody was looking) and crispy salmon skin (that I made for him specially).

He’s 10000% fine. He has his biscuits too, -and lots of water. It’s how I’ve looked after all of my dogs and never lost one to anything except old age.

One of my dogs loves carrots. I give them left overs. But not loads like this.

I think I'm the only one out of my NCT friends that has a dog so I was the only one that never really moaned about the mess the baby makes when you start weaning 🤣

@mrsbyers

Our dog regularly gets a bowl of pasta and cat food - he bloody loves it

Don't let your dog eat cat food or your cat eat dog food. They are formulated differently and can cause kidney issues.

I feed mealworms to my backyard sparrows😳 No idea if they are defra approved.

Does that count?

@Contactlesslenses

My dog loves watermelon, strawberry trifle and popadoms

My cats love popadoms too

Actually I work in healthcare science & do understand the regulations and the rationale. It's for consumer protection and that's sensible for those who are selling to the public.

@DivorcedAndDelighted you clearly don't understand the rationale! It is not just about consumer protection and the food chain. These rules were bought in to prevent the spread of infectious diseases amongst livestock after the devastating impact of Foot and Mouth 20 plus years ago. The rules are in place to protect the national flock not just yours. Whilst I appreciate you feel you are doing nothing wrong, that would not be an acceptable excuse if you ever get a visit from Animal Health!

If someone in the back end of beyond, for example, feeds their 2 chickens scraps, how does that affect Tesco's massive chicken farm 100's of miles away?

@3Britnee because if those scraps cause an infectious disease it could spread across the entire national flock by way of wild birds hence the reason all poultry was required to be kept in during the Birdflu outbreak.

I know it's law. I flout the law.

[quote Devastatedyetagain]@3Britnee because if those scraps cause an infectious disease it could spread across the entire national flock by way of wild birds hence the reason all poultry was required to be kept in during the Birdflu outbreak.[/quote]
Ahh ok, thank you.

Yeah, I dont think the poster above should give their chickens chicken curry, that's how BSE started, by feeding cows dead cows, wasn't it?

But I dont see how other scraps would be a problem. Animals were fed scraps for eons.

It's the risk of meat contamination in the scraps that is the problem (so say my hens get a disease from the meat in the spag bol, it then gets vectored away from my site by wild birds etc.

That's why there is an exception for fully vegan households to feed scraps, but to count as a fully vegan household you can't have a cat (cat food- obligate carnivore so all commercial cat food contains meat, although mine are happy omnivores tbh) and if you had a dog it would have to be fed a vegan diet and let's not go there...

That's also why you can have a non-meat cookup in your shed using separate utensils etc, and you can feed garden waste, as in trimmings, veg you've pulled out to compost etc, before it goes into the kitchen. Once it's in the kitchen it could be contaminated.

Really it's a case of a blanket ban and legislation when some people could potentially be sensible about avoiding contamination, but you only have to look at the origins of the last foot and mouth outbreak (well, not the very last smaller one that seemed to have dubious origins) to know that there's always someone who will cock it up for everyone else, with devastating consequences.

I know it sounds far-fetched but it you want a live example have a look at African Swine Fever- it's devastated pig populations across the world and could be brought into this country by someone feeding scraps with pork (from an affected country) contamination to their pigs, yes, even pet ones, which wildlife could then carry to other sites. It's a miracle we've kept it out so far tbh.

I don't feed meat to my hens.

We don’t feed meat. But do give them leftover veg. Boiled carrots etc. They love it when they see us approaching with a bowl of veg. They peck about and run off with their prize. They also eat grass, worms, gunge from the stream, leaves, flowers and goodness knows what else they find. They are free range and have a very happy life

No but if you have meat in your fridge, prepare it in the same kitchen etc that's enough of a contamination risk. Officially, again I know it seems a stretch but them's the rules, they work to the lowest common denominator of people that don't operate good food hygiene for the humans involved never mind the birds.

The only way to guarantee no contamination is no meat in the house, that's why there's the vegan household exception. Or don't let the veg in the house (garden waste, or separate cooking space elsewhere like a camping stove), that's the tiger thing that's ok.

Mealworms as a problem is because they are reared on god knows what in many cases (don't look it up if your squeamish) and therefore have the same problem of them being fed potentially contaminated meat and passing to your birds who then pass it on...and so on. There is/was somewhere in the UK that is regulated and produces food grade mealworms but I can't for the life of me think what it's called at the moment.