Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Hello and welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host, Dr, Judy Morgan, and my guest today is Billy Hoekman, and we are going to be talking about the importance of wild fermentation. And for those of you who don't know Billy, I don't know what rock you've been hiding under, because he's very well known in the pet industry. Billy is Vice President of Nutrition and communication for Green Juju, pet food and treats and all things yummy. He is involved in formulation, sourcing, working with farmers, education, sales and marketing. Any other hats that you wear? Oh yeah, dad,
Billy Hoekman 0:40
those are the most fun ones
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:44
He's also a well known pet health advocate who specializes in making complicated concepts easy to understand. And if you ever get a chance to hear Billy speak at an event, he's really fun to listen to, and he nerds out on science and information, but makes it really comprehensible for those of us who are like, really, but he's a fun nerd.
Billy Hoekman 1:11
I'll take it. I try to. I judge the public speaking by the number of laughs I get during the actual presentation, because it means people are listening.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:20
That is true, and you do always make it fun. The best one, though, was the one where you cried over Maple and your dog.
Billy Hoekman 1:28
Oh, yeah. Well, that's a that's slightly embarrassing, but it is. They are my, you know, inspiration. So
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:39
Billy had, it was in Virginia Beach, and he had a slide of his daughter Maple, and their dog, Huckleberry, who's a little Frenchy. And, you know, he talked about why he does what he does, and it's so that these two best friends can be best friends for a very long time. And all of a sudden his eyes just filled up, and he went, I wasn't expecting that. And I think pretty much everyone in the audience kind of had the same reaction, like, oh,
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:09
because they're both very cute.
Billy Hoekman 2:10
Yeah? Well, yeah, that's an understatement. I'm having this. I'm kind of having the same reaction now. So thank you for that.
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:17
You're welcome. You're welcome. Yeah, no, I have met them both, and Maple is 3?
Billy Hoekman 2:24
Yeah, she just turned three. Yep,
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:27
just turned three. So she's three, going on 37 because she speaks better than most of us and has a vocabulary that, if any new humongous words like she says things that you just would never expect to come out of a three year old. And when I saw her, she was a two year old,
Billy Hoekman 2:44
yeah, no, totally, yeah. No. I, you know, my, my, my funny story with that was when she was 15 months old, she said, Every day is a gift. We're like, Okay, well, you are 80, apparently. No, yeah. She's her. Her favorite word right now, I think in the last couple days, is quality. So she keeps talking about the quality of things, and then that so or the other day, she goes, Oh, you know, I know I'm not going to be able to remember it now that I said quality. So anyway, she's very smart.
Dr. Judy Morgan 3:23
She is she's and she's just cute as a button, and incredibly sweet. I have never seen her have a meltdown, which is very cool.
Billy Hoekman 3:33
she definitely does. She said, she said, she goes, currently, what does that mean? And then she goes, it's not raining. Currently, currently, it's not raining. So that was her little
Dr. Judy Morgan 3:50
see three going on whatever. I mean, she's incredible. She's very, very cute. Okay, we're here to talk about fermentation, even though Maple is a great topic. So so we know you're the king of fermentation. I'm gonna have to tell stories on you, because I've just heard so many and they're they're funny, and let me just tell everyone that Billy's wife is a saint, because she puts up with Billy's science projects in her kitchen. But my absolute favorite was the exploding poop fermentation.
Billy Hoekman 4:26
Well, it wasn't exactly it's not that it exploded, it's just it worked really well, too well for comfort. We, we did a I did, I say we, I did a ferment on the, I fermented two of the fecal transplant capsule capsules from AnimalBiome. And within seven hours it, I mean, there's a lot of you good microbes in there, because I've never seen this. Within seven hours it. Turned into a very formed poop cheese, essentially. And was the grossest thing, and I needed to get it out of my house, although now I'm sort of regretting that, and here's why, because really what you could do with that is you could take that really gross cheese, and you could take out, say, like, a half ounce of it, and you could inoculate that in the new milk, and then you could take that that would become like a yogurt, and then you could take that yogurt and take some of that and inoculate that out, and eventually it'll just be the microbes and not the actual poop. But it was just weird and gross, so I got it out of my house, and when I opened it, Emily heard me from the other room say, this is a mistake. Nobody should ever do this to myself so, but that does tell you that those capsules are very viable with a lot of good bacteria. So,
Dr. Judy Morgan 6:03
well, I happen to have some fecal transplant capsules sitting on my desk, but I don't think I'm going to ferment them.
Billy Hoekman 6:09
No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't recommend it. And I ferment many, many things. So
Dr. Judy Morgan 6:15
yes, you do so, but now we've got this new thing that you're doing, and you're calling it wild fermentation. What is wild fermentation?
Billy Hoekman 6:23
So, wild fermentation, in a nutshell, is there's a lot of ways I think, that people are more used to in the industry. Here's a good example, like, if you're making kefir, you are inoculating, especially like kefir from the grocery store. So they're pasteurizing the milk, so they kill the milk or the good bacteria in there, and then they introduce, like, a kefir culture of some kind. So good probiotics, healthy yeast, etc, and then those are going to be what sort of, like, proliferates throughout the into the kefir, and that's what thickens it. That's what makes it grow. And that's the same thing with yogurt. It's the same thing with like, a lot of a lot of fermentation uses like whey to do that, even in like vegetable ferments. But wild fermentation is different, it's harnessing the bacteria that naturally exist within the food itself and the natural yeast that exists within the food itself and in the air. And it's sort of like when people do sourdough, you know you can, you're kind of getting whatever the environment is there. And so when you harness those bacteria specifically, and it doesn't matter what the food is, you are harnessing nature's sort of intended probiotics. So what that means is it's an entire food culture. And I think one of the things that we're our dogs and cats are missing, generally, is all of those, you know, countless species they would get from. Let's say your dog's maybe not missing some of this, but your dogs plural, because you live on a farm, right? Most of our dogs don't live, most of our dogs don't live on a farm, and most of our most of us, don't get out to the woods, you know, every day, or anything like that. Most of our dogs aren't eating whole prey in the woods and getting dirt in their mouths and getting these subsets of bacteria or, you know, digging for plants. And that's really, I think the future of probiotics, and also what we're always looking to do is, how do we take Whole Foods, grow those cultures, and then it's the difference of, say, supplementation, which can obviously be effective, right? Like you've seen it, you know, dog X has a has a gut issue. You add probiotic, and it really helps. The difference here is we're looking we we look at like a base of diversity. So any one of those wild ferment cultures, you're going to be getting hundreds of different species and family types within that, and it's going to change every time you you know, say, say, you know, I'm doing something with beets at home, or something like that, it's going to change every time I do it based on the beets themselves. Because those beets were grown in a different soil on a different farm. They were harvested during a different time of year. When it comes to, you know, yeast, even in my kitchen, there's different like, sort of native bacteria that will change throughout the year. So you're going to get all of these hundreds of species. So what I would argue for that we need moving forward is that base of diversity, and then if we need to supplement on top of that, you can, sort of, you can sort of do that. The other cool thing is, and this comes from, like, a study done on raw milk, but I think the same thing's true when you also wild ferment. But I was looking at a study on raw milk where they were actually measuring and analyzing some of the bacteria types in milk, and they could, they could, basically. Um, when they took all these subsets, they could not only tell what farm it was from based on the bacteria subset in the milk, but they could find those bacteria in other parts of the farm itself. So what that means is, all of those native bacteria on the farm are getting into the milk as well. So you, you're, really getting all the bacteria of the farm, and not just the milk itself, which I think, you know, most of us, my dog, for example, sits on a computer chair most work days with me here at this co working space, and then he goes home and and, you know, he doesn't get a lot of time outside of the city. And so the goal of wild fermentation started to bring diet into or bring environment into the diet, if that makes sense.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:49
It makes great sense, and I love it, and it's really interesting, because over the years, with all of my foster dogs, and, you know, newly adopted train wrecks, I've had a lot of them that will go out and search the yard and that they will literally chow down on potting soil or, you know, pulling out grass and roots. And very interestingly, I had a potted palm by our pool, and it had died over the winter, so I dumped it out, and I dumped it out in the donkey paddock. And I was just figuring, well, the soil will just mix in. It'll be fine, but it had this huge root ball, and the donkeys came, they ate the root ball and all of the potting soil. And I was like, clearly something was our soil is our farm soil is very dead. It I actually just bought soil probiotics for 10 acres that we're going to go spray out there. And so I know that my equines are lacking in good soil probiotics. So this pot had really rich, good stuff in there. And so it just goes to show you that if you if you know, if you give Zoo Pharmacognosy, if you give the animals a chance and a choice, they will choose what they need. And I should have videoed it, I stood there absolutely fascinated watching these donkeys eating every bit of that dirt. It's like, wow.
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:25
So this is, this is very cool,
Billy Hoekman 12:26
I was gonna say, and to to mention, when you're doing this in vegetables and plants and mushrooms and things like that, they are all soil based cultures like that, because they're coming from the plants,
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:45
right? So I want to talk about how you're handling those and what you're doing with them. We need to take a break to hear from our sponsors. We'll be right back. Stay tuned.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT #1 12:53
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PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT #2
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Dr. Judy Morgan 13:55
Welcome back. You're listening to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host, Dr Judy Morgan, and my guest today is Billy Hoekman, Vice President of Nutrition and communication for Green Juju. We're talking about wild fermentation. So I know that Green Juju either just came out or is coming out with a new wild fermented mushroom probiotic. So does that mean that the fermentation and the probiotics and organisms that are in this are coming from the mushrooms as they're harvested? You're not adding anything into that? Or how does that work?
Billy Hoekman 14:36
Yeah, so it's so we take cremini, shiitake and oyster mushrooms from actually the first organically certified mushroom farm in the country, which is about 45 minutes south of my house. And what we're making there is a salt brine. So we're just, all we're doing is putting those mushrooms in salt water. Essentially, it's actually, it's. Actually really funny. Sometimes, when you do a salt brine like that, it's not a very difficult ferment. Mushrooms are not an easy ferment. I actually failed at this more than a handful of times when I was developing this before we figured it out. Yeah, it's not it's not as easy as like carrots or sauerkraut or something like that.
Dr. Judy Morgan 15:21
Is that because they have a lower sugar content, why is it that they don't ferment?
Billy Hoekman 15:25
I think that, and it's also paired with they just have a higher diversity of, like, baseline, like yeast and bacteria differences, especially like, the cool thing about wild ferments too is, like, when you get the yeast profiles. They're like a balanced profile of what exists in nature. So it's kind of like, you know, you might have like a, this is just a side note. You might have like a candida overgrowth or something. These will contain a full yeast profile, including Candida, but it'll be the actual profile that would exist in a healthy way, right, in nature versus, you know, that kind of thing. And so yeah, essentially, during that fermentation process, and keeping those at a temperature of about 70 degrees, all of the once you put the salt in, the pH lowers, and then once the pH lowers, all those good bacteria, like, Oh, we love this environment. And then they start to grow, and that lowers the pH even more, which is also your food safety step. And so with the mushrooms, it's, it's kind of like a double whammy, because you get the first part, which is, like, this is meant to be a probiotic, and it's meant to be, like, I was talking about that base of diversity, but also, so instead of it was kind of funny, because when we released this, people didn't really know the questions to ask about it, because there was nothing like it on the market. And so they'd be like, how do you extract, you know, the mushroom, how do you and it was like, none of that. We don't do anything that's been sort of done. And so you will get sort of some of the benefits as well of the mushroom, because those bacteria are eating the mushrooms and opening up, you know, right? Essentially, it's like, you know, to get certain benefits of some mushrooms, you have to cook them. Or, you know, there's, there's all these things you have to do to foods. It's, it's kind of the same thing, like a parallel for that would be, we have a fermented golden paste product, which we know that those bacteria eat the curcumin and turn it into metabolites, which makes it easier for your your dog or cats', you know, body, to just kind of assimilate into the bloodstream. And so it's kind of the same thing with the mushrooms, and we've been seeing it's cool when you actually get to release it into the world, because we've been seeing like, a myriad of different health benefits. And not only for just basic diversity, like, I would say, any healthy animal, whatever, but also for, like managing, we're starting to get back, and it's only been, I don't know, couple couple months that has been, like consistently in stores, and we've already been getting back, like, managing, you know, certain conditions like IBD and things like that.
Dr. Judy Morgan 18:05
Very cool, very cool. So you're selling this as a broth, like, how is this packaged?
Billy Hoekman 18:17
Yeah, it's, it's in a it's frozen. It's in an eight ounce. It's an eight ounce bottle. It's a very adorable bottle as well. And it lasts a really long it lasts a really long time too, for what you get, especially. And once you thaw it out, it lasts for 30 days in the fridge because of the fact that it's fermented, and the pH is low. It's it the pH averages, I think, somewhere around, like 3.8 so it's the same thing as those, like pickles you have in your fridge for two years, and they're so good, you know?
Dr. Judy Morgan 18:53
can you give this to dogs and cats?
Billy Hoekman 18:57
Yeah, so great for dogs and cats. We've been the palatability, you know, the pre palatability was good. The in market palatability has been good as well. One of the really interesting things, just side note that I learned when making this product was 65% of all the mushrooms produced in America come out of two counties in Pennsylvania.
Dr Judy Morgan 19:21
That doesn't surprise me, because we used to at the boarding facility where I kept my horses as a teenager, and then again, in adulthood, they used straw for their bedding, and the mushroom farmers would come over and take all the used bedding over to grow the mushrooms on. That's how, that's how they disposed of their manure and straw for, oh my gosh, it's been 40 years, and they're still doing it.
Billy Hoekman 19:50
Yeah, they had, they had, um, with, there's actually a really cool program with people we use where it's like, kind of like a cycle. So they take products like that. And then they compost them, and then the mushrooms make better soil when they grow, and then they actually take that soil when they harvest the mushrooms, and it's free to the farmers, and the farmers take it back and put it on their fields. So it's like a nice cycle, yeah, it's like a nice environmental cycle of how these mushrooms are.
Dr. Judy Morgan 20:18
See, that's the soil I need on my farm. Like I need, I need to get involved in one of these programs. I need to be recycling something back into the land.
Billy Hoekman 20:26
It's free. If you want to pick it up, I could put you in contact with these people. Really, you'd have to come up with a...
Dr. Judy Morgan 20:30
well, thanks. It's a bit of, a bit of a drive, and I'm gonna have to get a big old truck.
Billy Hoekman 20:35
I'm just saying, if you ever get desperate, I'm sure I can make that happen for you.
Dr. Judy Morgan 20:41
I'll see how my soil probiotics are do when I spray them on my land. Which is very cool. And, you know, we don't, we don't think it's, it's interesting. We planted new raised flower beds this year, and we bought, we brought in supposedly good topsoil to fill the first two thirds of it and it for it's, it still is. Topsoil in North Carolina is still clay. I mean, it just forms this rock hard lump. So then I went and got, you know, good gardens, potting soil in bags, and put it on top of that. But then we also bought worms and soil probiotics. And let me tell you, these flower beds are like the best thing ever. Next year, I'm going to fill them with vegetables instead. So, so this is very cool. So when the product comes, are the mushroom, so you ferment the mushrooms in this brine, and then are you just selling the broth, or the mushrooms still in there too?
Billy Hoekman 21:39
just the brine
Dr. Judy Morgan
What happens to all the mushrooms? are they completely broken down?
Billy Hoekman
No, so they're not. They actually get smaller, which is interesting. They kind of, I don't know Sure, yeah, kind of, kind of, so, as you can expect with me, these are fermented by one Amish guy in Pennsylvania and then put into the bottle by like one or two other Amish guys. And so I think John is actually still trying to figure out what he wants to do with those mushrooms. So I think they're currently just being stored and but for us, it was kind of like it's an easier education piece for the pet owner, if they're going to just, my guess is if, if you can't find somewhere to go with them in a certain amount of time, they'll probably be fed to goats. That would be my guess.
Dr. Judy Morgan 22:36
Oh, that's cool. There's got to be some health benefits there.
Billy Hoekman 22:42
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, yeah, but we it's really nice too for me to be able to partner and do more stuff out of Pennsylvania with local farmers here. And, you know, get to get to work with those people. Because contrary to the soil where you live, the soil here is incredible. And maybe it's because all those Amish farm or maybe it's because all those mushroom farmers returning all that soil for so long. But yeah, it's incredible here.
Dr. Judy Morgan 23:12
Yeah. Well, yeah, unfortunately, as has happened to so much of our land in this country, it gets over farmed and over farmed and and all of the nutrients are literally just gone, and that's why our food chain is so bad, and that's why fermentation is so good, because we're adding things back that are literally missing from our food chain these days. And so that trickles down. It's not just us, it's our our animals are, you know, it's, it's really interesting, like formulating food, and you look at nutrient profiles, and you're like, Yeah, but that nutrient profile from, like you said, the beets from one farm and one soil batch are going to be different from another farm another time of year. So I think, I think that it is really impossible to know the exact nutrient profile unless you take that exact beet and analyze it, and then you get your next one, and you have to analyze that one,
Billy Hoekman 24:12
and even then, like, you know, it's, that's, yeah, that's the biggest thing that I run into and try to educate people on, is, you know, being at the very fun AFFCO lab group and them saying that the average margin of error on a nutrient test is 20 to 50%. you're like, alright, well, great. And so that, you know that's that's why, when I you know, when it comes to, like, things I read on the internet when people are like, you need to do this because it has this much manganese, it's like, we can't know that.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:49
Yeah, exactly. And I get so many questions in my inbox from people who are like, what this isn't 100% complete and balanced? And I'm like, How do you know that anything is 100% complete and balanced, unless you analyze every single ingredient every single time, and know the exact components of that exact piece of beef, that exact piece of chicken, that exact piece of liver, and you don't, and you can't, and so you take averages, and, you know, keep your fingers crossed. But you know, our animals do incredibly but this is why, and I know you do this with Huckleberry, we rotate and we put different things in the bowl. And, you know, we're, we're we're always, I mean, you just have way too much fun with food. I have fun with food, but you have way too much fun with food.
Billy Hoekman 25:33
Well, my one of my favorite, one of my I think you'll find this really funny. One of my favorite stories to tell is recent stories is, I don't do very many, like individual consults anymore, but you know sometimes that some of them find their way into my email box. And I was working with this woman, and she said, you know, my dog has had all of these sensitivity issues and can't eat any foods, so my dog has eaten nothing but sweet potato for two years. And you know what? The dog was mostly Okay. To be honest with you, the dog was mostly fine. We definitely work to get it onto more foods and more balance. I'm not saying dogs should only sweet potato, but the idea that we're going to miss out on this nutrient for this week and the dog is going to go into, you know, some trauma failure is just not dogs are like us, you know.
Dr. Judy Morgan 26:31
And I think that is really important. Like, if you get nothing else out of this podcast episode, don't be freaking out thinking you're going to screw it up if you want to put real food in your pet's bowl, because you're not going to kill them, it's, I mean, if you feed them something poisonous, but I mean, they are incredibly good at figuring it out, and as long as you're putting different things, but and apparently not sweet potato every day. And I've had, I have had clients who have fed horribly, horribly deficient meals, and their animals are still running around bouncing and happy two years in. So don't freak out about every single meal being perfect it you know, just,
Billy Hoekman 27:18
just do the best as you go. That's That's all we do, and that includes me and you. You know, we just all do the best we can
Dr. Judy Morgan 27:25
exactly, exactly. This is great. Billy. Congratulations on the new product. Anybody who wants more information about Green Juju, there's information on our website. We carry a lot of their freeze dried products because we can't ship frozen stuff. They're on Instagram and Facebook under Green Juju Kitchen, and I promise not to give out Billy's email because he'll have 400 consults. But you can contact them through Green Juju Kitchen.
27:51
You can email [email protected] and or our social media. And truth be told, Kelly and I disperse and get all the [email protected] emails. So I handle all the nutrition questions. They go straight to me.
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:07
Okay, he gave it out. I didn't have to now it's on him. If he gets 400 consultation requests next week, it's not my fault.
Billy Hoekman 28:13
I just refer them to other people who do that for a living. So that's totally fine.
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:16
There you go. Perfect. Well, he'll at least point you in the right direction. Billy, as always, thank you very much. Can't wait to meet up with you. I know we'll at least be together in October, but maybe before
Billy Hoekman 28:28
I'm about due to bug you again. So about coming to your house so
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:35
Billy just invites himself when he wants to. All right, everyone, enjoy. Enjoy your pets. Thank you very much Billy.
Billy Hoekman
Thank you.
Outro
Thanks for listening to another great Naturally Healthy Pets episode. Be sure to check out the show notes for some helpful links. And if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow and listen for free on your favorite podcast app. We value your feedback and we'd love to hear from you on how we're doing. Visit DrJudyMorgan.com for healthy product recommendations, comprehensive courses, upcoming events and other fantastic resources. Until next time, keep giving your pet the vibrant life they deserve.
DISCLAIMER
The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian, licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. You're encouraged to do your own research and should not rely on this information as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Dr. Judy and her guests express their own views, experience and conclusions. Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets neither endorses or opposes any particular view discussed here.