Prepping for an emergency for your family is smart, but for a lot of families there are members of the home that can easily be forgotten about when it comes to preps. It’s all fine and well to have food and water for your human family members, but your 4 legged family members will need them as well. Prepping for your pets isn’t as hard as you may think it would be though. In reality, they need very little.
How to Prepare Your Pets for an Emergency
Food – To prep food for your pet, you’ll want to make sure that you have at least 6 months stored with the brand they currently eat. In any emergency that lasts longer than 6 months, you’ll want to be moving them toward a more sustainable food source. Since pets can have touchy stomachs though, you’ll want that 5th or 6th month to start moving them over to whatever you’ll be feeding them after the mainstream food runs out. For an extended emergency, consider moving them to a raw food diet and learning how to make your own dog food.
Water – For pets, water is almost more important than food, especially for dogs. In addition to having water storage for your family, you’ll also want to be sure you have more than enough for your pets. To figure out how much you need to store for them, you’ll need to store a minimum of 1 oz per pound of weight on your pet, per day. That means if you have a 10lb cat, you’ll need to store a minimum of 10oz per day or just over a gallon per week for Fluffy. Just like with your family, you should aim to have a minimum of 3 months water stored for each pet you have.
Misc. – As most pet owners know, they can come with a lot of accessories and those items are ones you’ll want to be sure you don’t forget to prep for. Things like medications that they take, flea and tick supplies (since an infestation can impact more than just the health of your pet), leashes, litter, bedding and more. Those little items are very easy to forget and could make the difference between your pet surviving and being a help and your pet not making it through the emergency situation. As always, try to have those items on hand for at least 3 months.
When you do your emergency preps, be sure not to forget your pets. After all, they’re family too!
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