I'm not sure if anyone is here from the reddit community, or remembers my tiny post about trying to find a way to package my dog food without using ziplock bags.
But basically, I said I make my dog food in bulk, using vegetables that where dumpsterd, home grown, etc. At the time I had a 150 lb cane Corso, only. So portions where already pretty large, I would process and freeze vegetables as needed and make a batch of dog food all at once in a 30 ish gallon stock pot, then freeze them in flat packs of ziplocks.
Since then I also have an incredibly high energy rescue pit mix puppy in my family.
I was given allot of advice, all of which I tried out.
The one that I thought would be the most promising was freezing them in sheet pan trays, scoring them. And separating them with wax paper.
No lie. This worked horrible. I tried many iterations of that. Nothing worked out.
I did end up finding a solution.
I found large plastic Tupperware containers. They're about the size of casserole dishes. Just twice as deep. I fill those and pull 2 out at a time one to defrost on the porch and the other one to throw in the fridge for a few days. By the time the first one thaws out, the one in the fridge is about kicked. These containers are pretty cheap. And I don't expect them to last forever. But I'm very careful with them and so far it works great! I should also say they seem to hold up longer than the reusable vinyl/silicone bags I tried. Tbh for most applications, I would recommend using Mason jars over them for pretty much everything.
I was so hesitant to buy plastic Tupperware that I ended up creating more waste in the long term.
I came here to say this! My chickens love pumpkins. If you know anyone who has goats they will demolish then. Aaaand You can also cube them or puree them and add them to dog food. With an appropriate ratio of animal protein.
For cat food you can boil and blend some chicken with a little bit of pumpkin and salt by weight. It comes out like a pate' and my cat loves it. Vet aproved if you stick with the correct ratios.
If you have dogs that like to chew and shred you can cut a hole in one to get it started and let them have at it outside.
I also highly reccomend calabaza en tacha as a dessert. Shit is sooo fucking good and really simple to make.
I used to grow pumpkins, but this time of year so many are being thrown out at stores that i just dive them now.