In Canine Caviar Google Hangout #18 learn about how to store Canine Caviar alkaline based holistic pet food.
Doreen Wong: Welcome everyone to Canine Caviar Google Hangout #18, and we are answering your questions on Facebook, you ask them, we ask Jeff and he responds to them directly. We have one of our Facebook Furr parents with us, Lynn, you had a question for Jeff.
Lynn Stacy-Smith: I was on a dog forum and another Canine Caviar customer said that the bags were formulated to store the food correctly, is that the best way to store the dog food. I hate anything plastic anyway, so I don’t want to just dump it into a plastic container, but are the bags specially made?
Jeff Baker: The bags are specially made to store the food. The bag has an equal to or better barrier than a coffee bag so it really has a minimal amount of moisture or oxygen transmission. So if you do want to use a plastic container we recommend that you put the bag inside the plastic container. It helps two ways, one that it helps to keep the oxygen from oxidizing the food and two, what happens a lot of the time is that people don’t adequately clean the container out or they just pour new food on top of the old one so when they do this then the stuff on the bottom will get older and older and older and actually will go bad. The most important thing is that yes, we did a lot of research and used a lot of technology to create a bag that would help to preserve that food and keep it fresh.
Lynn Stacy-Smith: Ok, well, that’s interesting.
Jeff Baker: And Canine Caviar, we’re the first company to use a bag that wasn’t paper for pet food, One of the difficulties we realized we were going to have was without using any preservatives how we were going to maintain optimum freshness for the pet and we actually worked with a company called Kryovac at the time and they helped us develop some packaging and since then it’s evolved a little bit more and more and it’s a trend that a lot of people have jumped on the bandwagon.
Lynn Stacy-Smith: Well that’s awesome, I’m glad I asked that question.
Jeff Baker: Yeah, we get it all the time where people say “we pour the food into a bin” and we’re always like “please keep it in the bag”, we really worked hard to make something that would maintain the freshness of the product.
I will say that there a lot of bags that are just purely plastic, they don’t have a lot of moisture or oxygen barriers and although they look nice they’re not really helping maintain the freshness of the food. There is a big difference in packaging technology between one bag that looks like plastic or foil versus another one.
Doreen Wong: Just joining us is another one of our Furr parents, this is Brenda. Brenda, do you want to introduce yourself?
Brenda Roche: I’m Brenda Roche; I’m mother to Gracie Roche who starred in the Wiener Dog Nationals the movie.
Doreen Wong: And Brenda had a question for you Jeff.
Brenda Roche: I keep hearing about how you can put the wet Canine Caviar food into a Kong, you can freeze it and it takes awhile, my question is if you open a can, I have a mini dachshund, if you open a can, how long is it good for?
Jeff Baker: As long as you put the remaining contents into the fridge, it’s actually been brought up earlier, that it’s like putting leftovers into the fridge so it will last approximately the same amount of time. Now we do recommend that you transfer it from the can to a container of some sort because that will actually help to maintain that freshness as well. As long as you use it within 4 or 5 days it’s no problem.
Doreen Wong: Sometimes they sell those can lids, does that help with the freshness or should they still put it in a container?
Jeff Baker: We recommend taking it out of the can because the can will cause it to age a little bit more quickly once it’s opened.
Lynn Stacy-Smith: I am actually Queen of the Kong stuffers, not my official title, but I have multiple Kongs and I just fill them all at once and store them in the freezer, so that’s what I do with mine. And I take some of their dried food and layer it in with the canned food and then sometimes I’ll rehydrate some Synergy and put that in there because they like multiple layers, so if you’re just getting started putting Canine Caviar in Kongs, you can do all sorts of things. And if you buy the plastic pastry bag fillers, you can squirt the Canine Caviar canned food into the Kong really easily.
Doreen Wong: Lynn, we may have to have a Google Hangout in your kitchen.
Lynn Stacy-Smith: I love it; I could be like Rachel Ray. We put bananas, Greek yogurt, peanut butter, and all sorts of things.
Doreen Wong: As always, thank you for joining us for our Canine Caviar Google Hangout.