Preparing Pumpkin For Homemade Dog Food (outside, problems, ears, home)

[oregonwoodsmoke]

It's pumpkin season. I found pumpkins for 28 cents a pound. That's as cheap as I found pumpkins last year, so I bought two of them.

Here's how I prepare them to go into dog food.

I find pumpkins a bit difficult to cut, so I wash the exterior and then fling them hard onto the concrete outside. That will crack them so I have a place to start cutting. I cut them into chunks and the chunks and all the guts go into a roasting pan. Place a little bit of water into the bottom of the pan and bake 350 degrees.

Time cooking depends on the size of the chunks. I check after 1 hour. The pumpkin should be quite soft.

Set the roasting pan on the counter and let the pumpkin get completely cooled.

Once it is cool to the touch, it is easy to remove the hard peel. I "puree" the pumpkin by squashing it with my hands. Then it gets divided into zipper freezer bags, and then into the freezer, to be taken out later and added to batches of dogfood.

I use gallon bags because I make big batches of dog food. Adjust the size of the portion to suit your dog food cooking proceedure.

I like to cook enough pumpkin so I can use it, alternating with other ingredients, all year. Cheap pumpkins are only available at halloween, so I stock up.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

I cook the pumpkin guts along with the rest of the pumpkin. Pensive likes the seeds, so I cook those too. The seeds don't seem to cause any sort of problems.

One of my pumpkins had exceptionally fat seeds, so I pulled a bunch of those out to cook for myself.

A freezing hint. Be careful how you stack the bags of pumpkin pulp. The bags will squish onto any space you put them in and will wedge themselves into tight places and be difficult to get out of the freezer. I place the pumpkin flat, on a silicon sheet ( or a few layers of newspaper) until the pulp is frozen and then I can put it wherever I like in the freezer.

If you put the pulp all lined up in a row, upright, the bags will push together and can be difficult to remove. If you set the bags on a metal grill shelf, they will sink between the bars and can really be hard to remove.

Once they are frozen, they can be stacked any way you like.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

I like to vary ingredients but the last couple of years, I've used a lot more yam than pumpkin.

Ive been getting yams for about 40 cents a pound ( in 40 pound boxes) . A yam has zero waste and it's fairly low moisture. It's also contains good nutrition. A yam at 40 cents a pound is a more economical purchase than pumpkin at the usual supermarket price. The pumpkin has a lot of waste and it contains a lot of water.

I get more dog food out of the yam.

But I like variety for the dogs and 28 cents a pound Is a good price for pumpkin in my area. If I find a better deal on pumpkin, I'll buy some more pumpkins

[Windwalker2]

Thanks for the suggestions. My freezer is crammed full of stuff like that for me that I freeze for later use. I have concluded I need to buy a separate freezer just for my dogs to be able to home feed. LOL