Baby food is expensive (Gerber chicken is about 80 cents per small jar), but you can make your own by boiling chicken in as little water as possible, boning it, then blending the meat, fat, and skin in a blender with the soup made while boiling.
You don’t have to use a whole chicken; breasts and whole legs work fine, and you have more meat per purchase weight and less bone waste. The goal is a product about the same consistency of a smoothie or milk shake, so you may have to add a bit more water, or not add all the soup, depending on the specific circumstances.
For each chicken processed, I usually add:
- tablespoon of olive oil,
- a tablespoon of gelatin,
- and some liquid taurine (see the bottles for amounts, but you can’t overdose – just waste)
If you saved your baby food bottles, just fill them up and store them in the freezer until needed. Or, you can do what I do: I pour a serving into a small, or flat bowl, seal the bowl in a sandwich-sized ziplock bag, and store it in the freezer. When I need a serving, I take the dish out of the ziplock bag, warm the food in the microwave and it’s ready to go!
I recently bought a supply of plastic Petri dishes, and am switching to those rather than using bowls because I have noticed many of my ferrets hate their whiskers dipping into the food, and no bowl is as flat as a Petri dish (Check out eBay for a cheap supply). They are also much easier to stack in the freezer AND I don’t have to use a ziplock bag.
So much has been said about Bob’s Chicken Gravy that I don’t need to go into it here. Basically, everything said about chicken baby food applies to Bob’s Chicken Gravy.