# What To Do With Animals,shtf



## Meerkat (May 31, 2011)

What about your animals in a shtf situation?Can your dogs hunt?Can your chickens live off the elements and what little you can give them?


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## kejmack (May 17, 2011)

I have prepped for my animals. I have a ton (literally) of chicken feed. I have put away dog food and rice for the dogs. I have a year's supply of parrot food for the Cockatoo. I have probably 6 months of hay for the livestock.


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## OldCootHillbilly (Jul 9, 2010)

Right now we just got cats. Got food put up fer em an they can always eat mice an such.


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## gypsysue (Mar 27, 2010)

This has always been one of my favorite subjects! So many people think (or do) that they're going to get a few chickens for eggs, or maybe more to raise for meat. Oh, and maybe a goat for milk and cheese, and let's see... rabbits for meat? A calf or two? 

Then of course there's the guard dog. The dog might hunt for his/her own needs, but will it be enough, year round, to keep him fed? What a dilema. Wild rabbits and squirrels for the dog... or for you and your family? :dunno: You can't raise much for a dog in the garden, except possibly some 'filler'. Believe me, this is something we've thought about a lot. We have a family member that is a Border Collie, and we'll be having to figure something out for her.

Chickens might be able to free-range or forage for their food in a warm climate but most of the country is cold in winter. Things are dormant, maybe even buried under snow for months at a time...so I've heard anyway!  You'd have to grow something to feed them over the winter. And if you don't have some protein to give them, they probably won't lay eggs as well. In the summer they can eat a lot of bugs for protein, but raising soy beans or pintos/any dry beans, can be used for protein the rest of the year. 

Rabbits and goats... you can raise a lot of their food and cut forage for them. 

Tomorrow my book "Food Self-Sufficiency: Reality Check" is going to be a free kindle download. Among other things, it covers feeding animals when the SHTF, more in depth than this post. 

You don't need a kindle to download it. Just look for it on Amazon, or go to PamsPride's thread, "Free Kindle Downloads" in the chit-chat section of the forum, and click on her daily downloads tomorrow. There is an option on there to Download it for PC. 

The book will be FREE tomorrow, Friday September 14, 2012. If anyone has a problem with the download, please let me know. It'll answer some of your questions about this subject.

That doesn't negate the good and informational responses alread on this thread and I'm sure that will be added to it.


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## hiwall (Jun 15, 2012)

"Can your dogs... " good idea they keep longer.
"Can your chickens..." good idea they keep longer.
OldCootHillbilly just added a post about canning dogs.


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## kejmack (May 17, 2011)

GypsySue, the people who think the dogs can hunt to survive are probably the ones who think they are going to "live off the land". LOL My old vet, who is also a prepper, told me that dogs do quite well on rice and eggs. She pointed out that the main ingredient of many dog foods is rice. 

I forgot to mention that I keep a year's supply of wormer on hand, too. I rotate it as I worm the horses and dogs each year so the expiration dates are always a couple of years out.


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## gypsysue (Mar 27, 2010)

Rice doesn't grow well up here in Montana. :hmmm: So, how many years and how many pounds should a person stock up on rice, in addition to that for feeding the family? :scratch: 

It's not going to be easy, if we get into a long long long term SHTF.


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## BillS (May 30, 2011)

All we have are our two cats and the two cats that my stepson and his wife have. We have about 260 lbs of dry food plus 360 5.5 oz cans of wet food. That's about 380 lbs of food for 4 cats. I think we're good for more than a year.


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## BlueShoe (Aug 7, 2010)

This is going to make you sad, and maybe angry. In a shtf event you're going to competing for existence against dogs. People are going to set their pets loose because they can't feed them or the owner is dead. Cats too. Think you're going to trap or hunt game to supplement your food? Dogs and cats are much better hunters than you are and dogs pack...against you even. If it's a real shtf event, kill every loose dog you see. Your life depends on it.


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## sunny (Dec 26, 2010)

tenOC said:


> This is going to make you sad, and maybe angry. In a shtf event you're going to competing for existence against dogs. People are going to set their pets loose because they can't feed them or the owner is dead. Cats too. Think you're going to trap or hunt game to supplement your food? Dogs and cats are much better hunters than you are and dogs pack...against you even. If it's a real shtf event, kill every loose dog you see. Your life depends on it.


 Yep, BEFORE they start getting Rabies from eating raw raccoons. If you come to the conclusion I did about feeding the excess dogs and cats to MY dogs make sure you handle them carefully and boil the meat very well. 
Dogs can live on almost any scrap, and they don't need to be fat like our pets. Here mine can have potatoes, milk, and scraps of meat.
I'm more worried about them having to be killed because they will give us away before we can hit the mountains.


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## Padre (Oct 7, 2011)

Eat'em.... though the chickens will eat just about anything and I like eggs...


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## lazydaisy67 (Nov 24, 2011)

I will admit I have been VERY bad about preparing for my animals. We are trying to get more hay, but because of the drought, it's been tough. UG


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## hiwall (Jun 15, 2012)

After a bad SHTF event domestic animals will have a 90% or more die off. Many will be in pens, houses, or other enclosures with no food or water. Ones turned loose will die from exposure, lack of food and water, or predation. Many will be killed by people for food, compassion, or in self-defense. As many as possible should be harvested but most will go to waste.


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## tsrwivey (Dec 31, 2010)

We have a cat, two cardigan corgis & a golden retriever, none of which will be hunting their own food. They will take you to the pantry their kibble & treats are stored, that's the extent of their hunting skills. . We have kibble, treats, bones, & meds put back for them & supplies for them are in with our bug out stuff. We have crates & tie outs in our BOV for them, even though that's not something we normally use. We feed them raw food & some table scaps so in a SHTF situation, they can tolerate changes in their diet without getting sick. The dogs will also be eating the bones, hoofs, beaks, guts, skin, etc of whatever hubby kills too.


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## CapnJack (Jul 20, 2012)

We have a Golden and two kitties. I am working on building up a supply for them, too, but with limited space it's kinda hard. 50lb bags and cans take up a lot of room. I also have a regrettably minimal amount of rice stored. I need to get on that.


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## tsrwivey (Dec 31, 2010)

We can also put those small animal traps out & catch things like moles, possums, squirrel, etc. to feed to the animals. My animals could probably live solely on the vast number of moles in my yard. :gaah:


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## 101airborne (Jan 29, 2010)

tenOC said:


> This is going to make you sad, and maybe angry. In a shtf event you're going to competing for existence against dogs. People are going to set their pets loose because they can't feed them or the owner is dead. Cats too. Think you're going to trap or hunt game to supplement your food? Dogs and cats are much better hunters than you are and dogs pack...against you even. If it's a real shtf event, kill every loose dog you see. Your life depends on it.


 Sorry tenOC but I've gotta disagree at least somewhat with you here. 99% of domestic ( house pets) especially dogs are to pampered and "un bred" to have any idea how to hunt anymore. I'll pit my hunting skills against most "pet" dogs any day of the week. As far as the rest as an animal lover I hate to say it but I must agree. The large percentage of the sheeple out there won't be able to care for themselves much less pets, and unfortionatly many so called preppers don't prep for pets either. So the humane thing to do is put them down instead of letting them suffer and slowly starve or become targets of other animals.


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## razorback (Jul 17, 2012)

I'm (well we're) crazy cat people. I have 9 (yes 9) all inside. Luckily I have a some what large house, now if you or anyone were to come into my house you would never know I have cats cause you'd never see them. All of the have been dumped, one even thrown out of a car as they drove by (yep good thing I didn't have anything in my hand that would have done some damage). 

Right now they are a little ahead of us on the preps  One good thing (maybe) is all but two could afford to lose some weight my largest comes in at 25 lbs. As far as them hunting, not going to happen, the 11 years we've lived here we had two mice in the house. The first one they just watched it run across the floor, DH finally caught it and put it outside. The second we didn't know we had, at the time the newest member of the family had him. But now he's up there in age and can't see all that well. So I'm afraid I have no hunters in the bunch.

I also buy extra ammo just in case someone looks our direction and says that's a mighty big ham.

The two outside dogs love hunting season, on any given day we can reconstruct a deer from items in the front yard. So I'm not to worried about them. We have stuff to suppliment their hunting though, too =) 

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that plans on not taking their pets out of the picture =(


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## kejmack (May 17, 2011)

tenOC said:


> This is going to make you sad, and maybe angry. In a shtf event you're going to competing for existence against dogs. People are going to set their pets loose because they can't feed them or the owner is dead. Cats too. Think you're going to trap or hunt game to supplement your food? Dogs and cats are much better hunters than you are and dogs pack...against you even. If it's a real shtf event, kill every loose dog you see. Your life depends on it.


I said I was prepping for my dogs. I plan to kill any stray cat or dog that comes on my property. It sounds barbaric, but we will be living in drastic times.

I agree with you that people are mistaken to think they can hunt and trap enough to feed their pets. Wildlife will be hunted to extinction by people who aren't prepared. (Everything that can be burned will be cut down for fires, too.)


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## goshengirl (Dec 18, 2010)

The talk of pets in a truly SHTF world breaks my heart, because we have several pets, and some would have to be put down. One cat and one dog are of poor health and don't handle stress well, and it would be more humane to put them down. Two other cats, not sure - I think they have the potential to be good hunters and self-sufficient, but we really have no way of knowing until that day comes. We will do whatever is most humane for them, too.

As for the other dog (shepherd/husky mix), I'm figuring out some way to keep him fed. He is my ears (I am half deaf) and my security.


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## Dakine (Sep 4, 2012)

I mentioned this before in a different post, but this one is specifically about pets so I think its worth repeating. Petco has 2x 60# air tight/ant proof vittles vaults on sale for $72 shipped. 

For me, that means I have 2x 30# bags stored in each can, it takes my mutt about 6 weeks to go through 1 bag of kibble, so... each can is roughly 3 months. I now have 4 of the cans plus her old 40# can which I'm going to repurpose to either duck, chicken or rabbit food. She has 1 can completely full, tomorrow I will be buying 2 more bags of kibble (I prefer Natures Balance, it's about as good as you can get and I feel like the extra cost is paid for in no vet visits due to digestive issues, and same with my cat, even when I had a couple cats, never a UTI issue)

Oh and the bonus here, at least for me, the county feed supply has the same plan Petco does for "buy 10 bags, get 1 free" except theirs is better!! it doesnt have to be in a 12 month span like Petco's does. So tomorrow when I buy 2 bags, they'll be kicking down a 3rd as well. That means on hand in stock I've got 7.5 months of dog food for the mutt, and next month I'll be buying another 2 bags, it just keeps adding up. 

Ideally I'd like to be able to feed her a year on what I have at the house. If there's a financial collapse or even just a serious nasty event, things like animal feed are going to be a premium. If diesel fuel skyrockets to $12 a gallon, it's going to be shipping food which is going to sell for tons more than it does now, and dog food... IF it's available, will be insanely priced.

She's not my food preps, she's part of my defensive preps! 


The cat eats very little kibble, and the same deal goes on the bags of cat food but it takes her months to finish one (I also give her 1 thing of wet food a day which she eats about 1/2 to 3/4 of depending on the flavor) so I figure I can augment her diet with random bird hearts and livers that I'm zapping with my air rifle. I used to hunt dove all the time back home, there's no reason why I cant hunt dove AT home during the PAW lol.


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