Putting unwanted pheasant to good use
Well I’ve found one thing to do with the millions of dead pheasants threatening to overwhelm sheds, game larders, garages and porches from here to Land’s End; apart from eating them, that is. Give them to Waffle.
It hadn’t really occurred to me that the obvious thing to feed a dog is pheasant, especially as dogs like Waffle spend most of their life trying to catch them, or at least find them.
True, feeding Waffle a pheasant is rather less simple than opening a tin, thawing out a chunk of tripe (yum yum) or ladling out that rather unappealing “dry dog food” .
I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of pheasant before, especially as we beaters have been encouraged to help ourselves to birds for at least the last three years, as game prices have plummeted.
It was only when I was talking to a keeper one day and asked what he fed his dogs on (I’m interested because Waffle is whippet thin) and he said cheerfully, “chicken wings”. So I did the calculations, standing for hours in Tesco, or it may have been ASDA, doing long division sums on the back of petrol receipts to find out whether 1.5kg of frozen chicken wings was cheaper per kg than tinned dog food or frozen tripe.
I think I can safely say that leaving aside bog offs and special offers there was almost nothing in it. Which says something about dog food. Or chicken wings. Or both.
On the other hand a pheasant is absolutely free if you discount time and effort. Admittedly skinning birds for a dog is rather different to skinning for human consumption. I can breast half a dozen pheasants in as many minutes but I haven’t fully cracked a fast and seamless, wholecarcass skinning technique for dog food. Work in progress.
To those to whom I gleefully mention the discovery of free dog food, there has been a certain nervousness and disbelief based on the well documented story that chicken bones and hence pheasant bones are bad for dogs. They are said to splinter.
But oddly it is cooked, not raw, bones that do the damage. Anyway, Waffle has been happily crunching through chicken wings and now pheasant bits with no ill effect and all the grinding and munching has improved her teeth no end.
To those, and there will be one or two bearing horror stories, who say this is irresponsibly dangerous talk and it will all end it tears and punctured stomachs, I can only say, stick to the dog biscuits. Waffle and I, and half our beating squad, will take our chances.