Sorry Trudi, When I saw it was going to be posted on the discussion I should have redone it and put my post on the exchanges side but to save me time from retyping the whole thing I left it. I know about the different areas but not everyone takes the time to visit them and I wanted to share my seeds as I was so glad to recieve them. I usually post on the Hosta Forum and the people who use the forum say to post on the discussion part as you get more responses. I'll try to do better in the future.

I have to agree about the misguided info on raw diets, however the other stuff seems accurate. I think you have to look at what's species-appropriate and a most likely scenario in the wild - that's where dairy sounds questionable, but if it works for your pet, more power to you. You don't see many dogs and cats milking cows or goats. It 'works' for us (and many argue we shouldn't really have dairy either) because of a much longer history of genetic tolerance, I guess in dairy-heavy cultures, if you got IBS or other sorts of reactions from dairy, you weren't so likely to breed... I firmly believe one of the reasons vets are so opposed to raw diets is the level of funding the pet food industry puts into vet training and resources etc. It would appear to be something of a conflict of interest, and it's documented in the below link. I should also point out that outside of North America, eg Australia, the BARF diet for dogs (raw food) is looked upon very favourably by many vets. I think if you feed your pet garbage, then yes, it may make them sick. The commercial raw food I feed our dog, I would be (not gonna try it though) confident would be fit for humans (if you like ground up bone and organ meat with your chicken) because it's prepared hygienically. Remember also dogs have a much shorted gi tract than us and can eat stuff that really would make us sick, it passes through dogs much more quickly. I hate to admit we started our dog on kibble and didn't change til she developed some big gastric problems, I knew it wasn't the best thing for her, but it was cheap. I don't know if the Kirkland food was implicated in the melamine scandal, but I'm glad we changed - I don't think she would have survived on kibble anyway. If non-cooked food really wigs you out, then your own home-cooked pet food is almost certainly better than commercial dry or wet food, especially the larger scale stuff. Some of those ingredients are just not species appropriate, and some are blaming the increase in carbohydrates in dogs' diets for the higher incidence of diabetes.. Avocados, though, I didn't know about. We did give ours some the other day. A dog in the wild would definitely eat fallen fruit, which was my reasoning. I don't see any prohibition on bananas, which seem to be one of her favourite things.... http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/health/rawdogfood/index.html

The winter one is good because people are placing orders and it's helpful to review what others post. Sherry, you did a good job of timing the one last year. You allowed time for comments before moving on to the next alphabet letter. Just racing through pages full of pretty faces is enjoyable, but I like the more measured pace that allows people to post their experiences or observations if they have any.........Maryl

good reminder! only we can't flip ours...(one sided) but will turn it....