First of all I spent many weeks researching this, even talking to the owner of a raw dog food company. (Catch the fun conversation on Episode 7 of Season 3 on my podcast: Simple Doesn’t Mean Easy.) 

Are dehydrated chicken feet good for dogs?

I learned that chicken feet are high in glucosamine, which I had been buying for him in pill form for years to help with his hip pain. As I’m working at incorporating more real food, and not as worried about convenience, with my own diet, I was intrigued that I could treat Bixby daily with something he would long for, and look forward to, and also feed him real, whole food instead of making him take a pill.

Are dehydrated chicken feet safe?

Even after the days of dehydrating (yes, warning, it’s not fast), and being assured by experts that chicken feet would be really GOOD for Bixby, I was kinda terrified giving him his first one. I watched every one of his happy crunches and bites closely, worried he would choke.

I quickly learned my fears were unfounded. He not only did GREAT with his first chicken foot, they immediately became his favorite treat ever, still today, years later.

In the beginning, I did cut off all the toenails before dehydrating the feet, using my gardening sheers. Some folks say this is imperative but Bixby has been eating the feet with the nails ever since that first batch, with no problem. But if your dog is small, not-so-healthy, or you’re just not so sure (as I wasn’t), feel free to remove the nails. It only takes a minute if you have good sheers.

How long does it take to dehydrate chicken feet in a dehydrator?

It takes about 48 hours for chicken feet to be “done” in the dehydrator.

I did defrost bags of frozen feet, from our last meat bird dispatch, to make my first batch, and they may have been slightly frozen still which would have added to the time of course.

You’ll know your feet are “done” and ready for storage when they have no flexibility or juiciness in the padded parts and the skin. They will be very hard and dry. Once they’re all dry, take the chicken feet out of your dehydrator and let them cool completely.

At what temperature do you dehydrate chicken feet?

You want to dehydrate your chicken feet at 150 F for roughly 48 hrs. I can fit 2 dozen feet in my dehydrator,  using only every other tray, since the feet are so thick.

How long do dehydrated chicken feet last?

1. I love these chicken feet from my favorite raw food company who also offer many other amazing functional treats.
2. And these chicken feet are great. I will often toss on an extra bag of feet when I’m ordering Bixby’s dog food from here, so I reach the free-shipping level.

How to Dehydrate Chicken Feet

1. Wash feet
2. Clip nails (or remove them all together) with garden sheers, if you prefer. (optional)
3. Line dehydrator trays with feet.
4. Run dehydrator at 150 degrees for roughly 48 hours.
5. Remove feet when they are hard and dry and there is no flexibility or juiciness in the padded parts or the skin.
6. Let feet thoroughly cool well/air dry.
7. Store in glass jars with sealed lids or mylar bags or storage buckets.

More of Bixby’s Favorites

More Details About Pets on the Homestead:

Training your dog to be chicken friendly

When your dog gets sprayed by a skunk 

Lies the pet food industry is feeding us (podcast)

5 things you need to know about raising barn kittens

Dog training & great dog products

Who teaches us more than he teaches the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds in the sky? Job 35:11

Pin this for later!

Click on the image below to pin this post.

Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the One of the Top Homesteading Blogs.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

The post How to dehydrate chicken feet first appeared on Souly Rested.

If your dog has been sprayed by a skunk

1. Get your dog RIGHT IN THE TUB. Do NOT let him walk around the house while you read this. This was the biggest mistake I made. The house smelled like skunk for weeks.

2. Grab 4 items and get to work:

• Murphy’s oil soap (dish soap if you don’t have Murphy’s)
• baking soda
• hydrogen peroxide
• vinegar

3. Apply the 4 magical items in this order and put each round on without rinsing the previous round.

1. murphys oil soap–scrub it in where ever the dog got sprayed.
2. baking soda–really scrub this in, and let it sit for 5 minutes. I used an old cleaning brush to scrub it in.
3. hydrogen peroxide–I poured this on the brush then scrubbed it over top of the baking powder. Let this round sit for 10-15 minutes.
4. vinegar–this is the final round and can be rinsed off immediately.

What to do next

If your dog is rid of the skunk oils at this point (surprisingly Bixby was) brush his teeth a few times. (I actually did that while we were waiting in the hydrogen peroxide stage.) And, of course, while he’s in the tub, give him a quick bath to hopefully get off all the smells.

If after one round of these cleaners you can still smell lingering skunk oils, repeat all 4 steps. As many times as needed.

What else can you do?

There are many other simple solutions that are, I’m told, pretty effective and I wrote about them the first time Bixby danced with a black-and-white stripped friend a few years ago. Read all of those ideas right here. (Why oh why didn’t he learn?)

But–true story–when Bixby got sprayed tonight I pulled up that old post of mine to remember what worked best the first time and I got confused trying to quickly–under stress–find the info I needed sooooo I thought this topic was worthy of a simple, straight-forward post laying out the best way we’ve found for dealing with the nastiness when a dog gets sprayed by a skunk.

It’s bound to happen.

Of course it’s bound to happen when you live rurally and you have a dog, but I kinda hope Bixby’s done dancing with his black-and-white-stripped friends.

If you’d like to know how I trained Bixby to be an amazing homestead dog who never chases the free-ranging chickens or ducks, I’ve written the full scoop about that and I have printables in my Resource Library as well.

Now if I could only train him that the skunks are off limits.

Other Articles You May Like:

Other Skunk Smell Remedies

5 Steps to Training Your Dog to Be Friendly with Free-Ranging Chicken and Ducks

10 Things You Need to Know Before You Get a Barn Cat

Bixby’s Favorite Things

Talk to me!

If you have any questions, leave a comment below. And please tag me on ig to introduce me to your favorite pooch (whether he or she has or has not tangled with a skunk) @souly.rested.

Pin this for later!

Click on the image below to pin this post.

 

Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

The post If your dog has been sprayed by a skunk first appeared on Souly Rested.

It was so foul. If your dog gets sprayed by a skunk your stomach will turn, you will cry, you will actually taste the foulness, it is that bad, and you will definitely need to know this…

Tomato juice won’t cut it. And most likely there will be no easy, once-and-done solution. But this mixture worked well for us. (Read on…)

The beginnings of a smelly ride.

We were busy tonight packing for our 3-week road trip. Yep, 3 weeks with Bixby by our side… 4 people, 3-weeks-worth of stuff, and an 80-pound labradoodle. In a 6-person van. And Bixby showed up at our back door covered. No drenched. In skunk spray.

At first, my husband insisted it wasn’t skunk. My daughter insisted it smelled like onions and latex balloons. A reader has since written to me that “it’s nothing like the familiar skunk smells we notice when walking or riding in a car and we pass by from afar. It’s more like a chemical reaction,” and I’d have to agree. A horrible, foul chemical reaction gone very bad.

But, regardless, it didn’t take us long to all agree it was indeed a dreaded, awful skunk spray.

Now that’s a gem of a teen.

We found the online recipe that suggested hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap. I ran to our little country store at 8:56, knowing Sean locks the doors promptly at 9. By the time I got home my teen daughter (she’s really a gem) had already done one round of washing with the little bit of peroxide we had in the house.

This post contains affiliate links.

In her unprofessional opinion… but worthy of my attention cause, well, she’s a teen who voluntarily washed our gut-churning, make-you-wanna-puke-it-smells-so-foul dog… the peroxide mixture made no difference.

Now to the credit of this concoction, someone did tell me later that night (on facebook–thank you all you loyal wonderful readers who replied to my pleas of desperation) that this potion works best if you put it on your dog right away after he’s sprayed… BEFORE you get him wet. Too late for that.

A special concoction.

Two other readers gave me great advice about this concoction as well… make sure you read to the end for that.

Also, someone else said it needs to sit on the dog’s fur. Like a long time. We did let it sit 5-10 minutes. But honestly it’s hard for me to judge really. My senses were overpowered and my reason and sense of time and space was blurry and cloudy. The smell started to physically hurt, all the way from my nose down to my gut.

What worked for Bixby?

So what finally worked the best for us? Straight up baking soda. Sprinkled on his coat and then rubbed in really vigorously… while holding our breath cause we thought we just may die. Then we topped that with a coating of Murphy’s Oil Soap . You know, the soap for wood? Another reader typed this suggestion to me while I was in my frantic state. He explained that oil attracts oil and it worked well for his dog.

I ran for the kitchen sink. Oh my goodness was I so thankful to discover I did indeed have some of this wonderful soap sitting under my sink.

I think I had purchased this bottle in 1999. Really. I hardly ever use this stuff, and there was still a few cup’s worth in the dusty old bottle. Thank goodness, cause Sean was probably at home with his PJs on by now, and short of an hour’s drive to a Walmart, I would have nowhere to buy this wonderful salvation of a soap until tomorrow. I tell you this to assure you that even a decade-old version of this soap is definitely potent enough to do a wonderful job.

At first we felt a little worried that it may be too strong for Bixby’s skin or hurt him if we got some in his mouth. But reading the bottle we decided it was actually a pretty “simple” soap and while it may not be the most pleasant thing for him, um, neither is skunk taste that coats your teeth, so we proceeded.

Bixby & Our Chicken

If you’d like to meet Bix under a much more pleasant set of circumstances, when we successfully trained him to be friendly to our free-ranging chicken, you’ll like this post.

What’d Bix think of the whole ordeal?

Strangely enough through all of this, Bixby was rather unphased. I, mind you, was almost passing out from nausea. Oh my gosh, I may smell that odor in my worst nightmares for decades to come.

Or maybe I was light headed from the fact that I was trying to not breathe. For like an hour. But Bix just stared at us with sad eyes. He seemed more upset that he had us all in a tither. And he, being the shy quiet dog that he is (he was a rescue), he hated being forced to be the very drop dead center of the world for a full hour and a half of rubbing, brushing, screaming, crying, washing, and rinsing. Okay, the screaming and crying was all me. But he didn’t seem to mind the taste or the smell. Well, as far as my screaming-and-crying self noticed.

We had realized at this point that the most foul measure of smell was definitely coming from his mouth. We were pretty sure that he walked up to that skunk’s butt and said, “Please, let me enjoy your perfume as an after-dinner mint this evening.” So we brushed his teeth. About 6 times. And then decided we would be buying him a new brush the next day.

Now to rid the house of the smell…

After the multiple brushings and the original peroxide potion, then two times of baking soda followed with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a rinse, we gave him a rest. And almost set the house ablaze by lighting every scented candle I own.

By the way, I say we “rinsed” Bixby, but the oil wouldn’t all come out. We let what we couldn’t rinse out sit on his coat, and then we put him on the porch–minus all the rugs and pillows–for the night.

The oddest suggestion that seemed worthy of a try if I needed it the next day (which thankfully I didn’t)? One reader suggested going to the dollar store for some… sorry, are you ready for this?… Massengil.

I told you it was odd.

Technique matters.

Another great point a few of y’all made was that order and care taken with the three parts of the hydrogen peroxide potion really matters. Suds up with dish soap, put on baking soda–lots of it, and scrub it to the skin–then let that set for about 5 minutes. Cover with peroxide and scrub, letting that set for 15 minutes. Then rinse with vinegar, then water (the acid will break up and float out the skunk oil). And immediately do it all again. Until the smell is gone.

That sounds practical to me, so honestly if I had to start it all over, I think I’d start with that method (not getting him wet until the end). But then again, if I had to start tonight all over again, I’m pretty sure I’d be suicidal.

Other stinky deterrents.

All total, there were quite a few other things y’all suggested that very well may have been a great cure. I didn’t experiment with these after realizing that my combination of baking powder and Murphy’s Oil from 1999 was doing the trick. But other suggestions included Listerine, toothpaste, Avon skin so soft, apple cider vinegar, and club soda. (According to Steve, club soda “Bubbles the stink right out. Not sticky. And if he shakes it doesn’t look like a crime scene.”).

Also, a great point was made that many, if not all, of these choices will strip Bixby’s natural oils, so it’s a good idea to add some fish oils to his diet for a little while to help restore those oils.

Now this is the best news of the night.

Just last month I got this amazing Sea Kelp Daily Supplement from RawPaws. I’d never heard of them before, found them on a google search, reached out to their customer service with a few questions, and was blown away by how much I like this company.

I got the Sea Kelp to help Bixby’s less-than-smelling-like-roses doggie breath and because it sounds like a great vitamin and mineral supplement. I realize I might be crazy (who am I kidding? I am crazy, I know, but I’m okay with that), but just after a few days of sprinkling a little of this sea kelp on each of his meals and I kid you not, his breath was greatly improved. Bill agreed. And he’s a much more reasonable person than I am. (Nobody calls him “crazy.”) If he noticed a difference, there was definitely a difference.

Of course I had no idea last month when this arrived in the mail from RawPaws how very thankful I would be to have a superhero supplement in my corner helping me rid Bix of skunk smell. For the next few days I will double up on his sea kelp and I truly think the skunk odor will linger only in my nightmares.

I think Bix will be taking sea kelp supplements the rest of his days. This stuff is a genuine lifesaver and my new best friend. Well, after Bix.

Now to get the house smelling like roses again.

As for the lingering odor in our house? I’m boiling a mix of vinegar and water, which seems to be helping. And someone mentioned filling bowls with blue Listerine (for some reason, yes, the color matters). Then, she said, I should pour some in dishes with rags and set them all around the house.

So there you have it.

I just wish I didn’t have this advice to impart. I’m sure Bixby would rather I not either.

But, hey, the great news is I think we may be able to embark on our road trip to Kentucky. And survive. Please follow along on facebook and instagram. If you’re not following me in both places, now is a great time to start. I’ll be sharing on different ones as I tour the farm where my momma was born in the rolling hills of West Virginia, farm sit for an amazing reader in Kentucky, and squeeze the sugary juices out of a sorghum plant in Tennessee. (Seriously. Oscar at the Tipton-Haynes Historic House is waiting for me.) I’ll explain more as the trip unfolds, but if you missed my Tuesday Live on facebook this week, you can catch that here. I explained about our 3-week road trip, as well as some huge sadness on the farm that I haven’t had the energy to write about.

But really, please follow along on social media, mainly to make sure we arrive at our first destination safely. Please report it to the authorities if you think we may be asphyxiated somewhere along I-95, with skunk-breath Bix at our feet.

UPDATE: While we were on our road trip, the awesome folks over at PeaceBonePet.com heard about Bixby’s new ode-de-Pepe-Le-Pew and wanted to help us keep our sanity on our travels. They sent us two life savers… a great doggie toothpaste that was a gel we could squirt on daily while traveling in the car, no toothbrush required, and minty-fresh treats that he loved. Go here to check out all the great dental care products PeaceBonePet has for your pooch, whether he smells like Pepe Le Pew or not. Oh, and here’s my live unboxing video… let’s see if Bixby likes these treats…

Meet Bixby & see him “perform” for his absolute favorite treats–>

Many readers often ask what camera I use to take the images you find here on SoulyRested. I love my Nikon; you can read more about my camera on my Resources page and even purchase your own here.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

And hop over here to find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

If you already ARE a subscriber, just hop over to the Resource Library here and enter your personal password. (If you don’t remember your password, no fear, we always include a personalized reminder in every Thursday email, “Hard Work, Simple Joys.”)

The post When your dog gets sprayed by a skunk… (Yep. This happened tonight.) first appeared on Souly Rested.