Step I: Deciding What's in the Kibble

How does one decide what to put in the food you ask? Well its all about what the hermies love to eat as well as what is going to replace what they are missing from their natural diet, and supplementing that with what we have access to.

Step II: Gathering the Goods

Because the kibbles are made with organic and all natural food, the first step is going to the Organic Market. Hopefully all the foods needed are in season and in stock!

A list is made of all the foods that are going into the kibble and they are either purchased from the store or an online organic or all natural company. Some of the foods are bought frozen, some are bought fresh, depending on which foods are going into the dehydrator first.

Now that the foods have been bought its time to prepare them! The dry goods arent ground up or added until the kibble is in its last stages.

THe fresh foods are the first to be prepared. THey are washed and either chopped, shredded, or cut into slices to prepare them for drying.

Once all of the fresh foods have been dehydrated its time for the frozen foods!! These must be thawed and drained of their juices before putting them in the dehydrator...or you can run the chance of shorting out the dehydrator motor. The juices from the fruits are saved in a tuperware and used to flavor the cuttlebones! YUM!

Some of the foods require cooking before they are dried, inorder to make them easier to rehydrate. Foods like rice, millet, and the squashes are all cooked before dehydration.

It will take anywhere from 6 hours to 12 hours to dry the foods. Once they are dry and crispy they are taken out of the dehydrator and are ready to be made into a kibble! Care must be taken that they are dry but not burned, foods that are not completely dry run the chance of molding.

Now that all of the ingredients are ready to go, for the powdered kibbles, such as Staple, they are ground up. Some of the ingredients, such as the spirulina, is already in a powdered form and can be added "as is" to the kibble. Foods that are sticky, such as oranges or pineapples, are paired with dry goods like oats or wheatgerm to help them blend and mix into the kibble better. Rice is also added to the kibbles as a natural way to prevent clumping/humidity in the food.

For the chunky kibbles, the foods are simply mixed together, as they have been cut small enough that they dry small and do not need to be further processed

Once all of the ingredients for the kibble have been blended together, the kibble is bagged and labeled and ready to go!!