After creamy soups for pets, what do we have?

Slow-cooked broths for pets!

Broths and clear soups are good for pets as they are humans because they contain much nutrients and they help to hydrate your pet, which we can’t emphasize enough on.

Today’s pet cookbook recipe is suitable for both human and pet use, so you can save up on some time– just give your pet some broth when you heat some up for your own use!

Also we must credit Mother Dearest for inspiring this post. She makes soups for us every other day!

First, you need:

A slow cooker.

We use a tiny slow cooker (as seen in picture) because 1.) Mother Dearest won’t allow us to touch her huge cooker 2.) we only have 3 cats, so a tiny slow cooker will do.

But if you have the luxury of fridge space to keep broths and a big cooker of your own, use away, lucky person!

Now you can’t use the same recipes for humans for pets, because most human stock and broth recipes call for garlic, onion and vegetables like carrots. If you have dogs, you may throw in some carrots and celery to slow-cook, BUT if you only have cats, do remember that they are obligate carnivores and do not need veg.

DO NOT ADD GARLIC OR ONIONS OR OTHER SPICES.

DO NOT ADD SALT.

Here’s the ingredients; they are very simple!

Chicken backs, from GIANT supermarket

Or pork rib/ pork soup bones/beef bones.

No packaging because these were stolen from Mother Dearest’s supply. Shhh!

Chicken feet/duck feet. Gross as this may be, they are actually very good. More about them later.

Chop your bones up! You may use leftover chicken bones from your chicken after you’re done preparing for your dinner.

Human recipes allow for use of roast/cooked chicken bones, but we prefer not to use it because we often use marinates that contain garlic and other spices for human consumption. So nothing but raw materials for our pets!

You may mix your bones.

Cover with enough water (the less water, the thicker your broth). You’ll probably have to top it up if you, like me, can’t resist lifting the lid to check on the broth.

And then…

Happy boiling! (Use low fire/low setting)

You need to boil at least 30 min -1 hr for the bones to start breaking down, leeching minerals and amino acids into your broth.

Halfway through!

The benefits of bone broths are immense.

Bones contain vital minerals such as calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, sulfur, fluoride, sodium and potassium and these are useful for (both human and pet):

1. Wound healing
2. Healthy skin
3. Arthritis

and more!

Here’s what we’ve tried:

Pork rib soup.

2hr slow cooked pork rib broth in this picture. It should have been cooked longer, but we got home late after work and only started at 7pm, and we didn’t want to leave it boiling for the entire night.

We replicated this as well for another 8 hours…and…

Did kitties like it on both counts? NO.

THEY GLARED AT US AND RAN AWAY. Hence the dismaying lack of videos. But if you like we can replicate their running away. But anyway they still got it later because we mixed it into their meal and they slurped the liquid up.

OWNER 1, KITTEHS 0 !

Chicken bone broth!

Done on a saturday 🙂

Yes kittehs gave the broth a suspicious lick…but they weren’t crazy about it.
Muffin refused to touch any. He walked away shuddering and shaking his hind legs like he usually does after he visits his box.

SO INSULTING! 😦

But as usual, they got it anyway, mixed in with their dinner. They emptied their bowls as usual–broth and all. heehee!

Be careful to take out the bone bits! The meat can be fed to them.

Our kitchen smelt heavenly! Visitors asked what we were making :):)

Lastly…

Chicken feet bone broth! The grossest but the nicest-smelling, thickest broth of the lot.

Chicken feet are high in collagen and gelatin, which means that the broth is very good for old and sick animals (and humans) who suffer from rickety bones, joints and stomach ulcers.

Researchers from–take a deep breathe long words and names coming up!–the Institute of Molecular Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Faculty of Biology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Shemiakin and Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences have found that stomach ulcers  may also be prevented by short peptides that are found in gelatin.

So …any readers suffering from gastric/ stomach ulcers here? You may just need to make yourself some broth 😉

And if your pet requires glucosamine supplements, why not give this to your pet as a treat as well?

Because of the high collagen and gelatin found in chicken feet, your cooled broth may congeal into some sort of gel:

Like this!

Gross, but very useful.

All you need to do for your pet is to add it to 1.) more soup or 2.) warm it gently so that it is less solid. Feed!

It is sticky, and the cats didn’t like it.  They shook their pretty heads and whiskers at us…but…

Again they got it at dinner with their meat, and again they turned up their noses at it…

BUT!

In the end they ate the lot ! 🙂

Here’s an idea for broth storage.

Cool your broth!

Put into ice cube trays. Our broth-tray is star-shaped because we don’t want to accidentally use them to cool coke or sprite or other soft drinks! haha.

Tada! Pop one up anytime you need to use…

and watch them melt!

Also, by this time…Mother Dearest caught up with what we’re doing and she’s been pilfering from our stock cube pile for her cooking. Oh well!

So we’ll end off with a picture of the cats’ soupy dinners…

Cooling chicken feet broth. Wonderful smelling soup!

Add to their meal!

If your pets are not used to soupy/wet dinners, then you may want to reduce the amount given, otherwise they may turn up their noses at your offering.

If need be, you may crumble freeze-dried K9 Natural Feline/Canine nuggets over the meal, or any other freeze-dried goodies like Thrill dried prawns or Sunday Pets mussels. That worked for us!

(now maybe you can understand why we like k9 Natural Feline so much hehe)

To end off, here’s a picture of picky Faith (but strangely our best supporter of soups) slurping the chicken bone broth with meat bits:

AWWWW!

We have many ways to use this simple broth–that’ll be another post. Stay tuned!  😉

Sources: 

Bone Soup Nutrition, Livestrong.com

Gelatin Treats Ulcer, Medical News Today

Making Fresh Bone Stock, Paleodietlifestyle.com

Mother Dearest

Categories: Pet Cookbook