Category: Feeding raw

This morning, the dogs ate a 5 lb roll of AFS meat.  Supplements added.  Skyy wasn’t as interested as normal and Kizzy managed to polish off the majority of the food.  They seem to take turns being pigs, so unless one dog is getting really short changed, I tend to let the hungrier one eat more.  Works well for the appetite for the less hungry dog for the following meal!

For dinner, they split 1 lb of beef organ mix (heart, liver, kidney), one can of Tripett each and some leftovers.

For dinner last night, the two girls consumed a 5 lb roll of AFS meat between the two of them, with the kids’ dinner leftovers on top (eggs, pancakes and a little bacon).  As long the items fed are in moderation, leftovers are fine to feed.  For supplements, I added Vit C, Vit E and Fish Oil.  They haven’t normally been eating quite that much, but Kizzy needs to gain a few pounds right now so I feed extra of the things they really like.

They had a light breakfast of one (tom) turkey neck each.  For dinner tonight, they had ground hamburger (split about 3.5 lbs), sliced up lamb liver, 1/2 can of Tripett each and a couple heaping tablespoons of plain yogurt.  Same supplements added.

For breakfast tomorrow, they will each get one can of Salmon, one can of Tripett and some leftover chicken & noodles that have been sitting in the frig.

In effort to give people an idea of what a raw fed dog might eat, I’m going to try to make frequent postings on my dogs’ meals.

This morning for breakfast, Skyy ate a pork neck bone and Kizzy ate a pork neck bone and a turkey neck.  I don’t weigh RMBs (Raw Meaty Bones) any longer, but imagine Skyy’s meal was about 1 lb and Kizzy’s was about 1.5-2 lbs.

For dinner, each dog had a can and a half of beef Tripett, mixed with 1 lb of a beef organ mixture (heart, kidney, liver) from My Pet Carnivore.  I added one raw egg (shell included), Vit C, Vit E and Fish Oil to each dog’s meal.

Dinner:

For tomorrow’s breakfast, I have pork ribs thawing on the counter.

You can purchase foods for your dog’s raw diet anywhere, so if you do happen to forget to lay something out in advance, a quick trip to the store can take care of the problem.

The drawback of picking things up from the grocery store is the cost.  It’s cheaper to buy in bulk.

Here is the meal my dogs ate this morning:

Sometimes, like this meal, I’ll pick up something from the local grocery store to offer something different than what I have in the deep freeze.  I purchase beef liver in bulk, so my dogs haven’t had chicken liver in awhile.

I try to vary the things I feed my dogs, although I find it easy to get stuck in ruts of feeding the same things over & over.

I don’t know what (if anything) chicken gizzards offer for nutritional value, but it’s something different (and the package also contained chicken hearts).  Liver, of any sort, is very important and needs to be fed the most frequently of any organ meat.  Heart is actually a muscle meat, although it also contains taurine (something vitally important in a cat’s diet).

Between my two dogs in this one meal, they ate the whole 3 lb roll of hamburger and a 1/3 of each of the packages of liver and gizzards/hearts.  Because I wasn’t feeding any bone in this meal, I didn’t want to feed too much organ meat as it could cause a little too loose of stool.  I repackaged and froze the other 2/3’s of the hearts/gizzards and livers.

My dogs detest the texture of most organ meats, so I chop them up and mix them in with other food.

I could try holding out, to see if I could force my dogs to eat the liver without cutting it up, but it isn’t a huge deal to chop it up and mix it in with something else.  All of my dogs have been the same way about the texture of organ meats.

If you’re new to raw, you might find that your dogs have preferences for various things.  If your dog balks at eating certain things, try feeding them in different ways before completely giving up on the item.  For instance, try room temp or nearly frozen.

Keep in mind that the meal pictured above does not contain any bone.  It’s fine as a meal (not every meal has to be balanced), however bone is critically important in a raw diet.  I could not feed only this to my dogs.

The dogs’ evening meal was one large (tom) turkey neck each.

Update of my broken leg:  I’m out of my boot and healing well!  For the most part, I walk with only a minor limp and it’s getting better every day.  Doc says it won’t be “completely” healed for another few weeks and I’ll have to deal with swelling for quite awhile.  All in all, I was very lucky to have avoided surgery.

Cases containing turkey necks, chicken leg quarters & pork neck bones

I buy most of my raw meaty bones (RMB) from a local restuarant supplier, Potthoff Foods, in Des Moines.  Most of the items I purchase there need thawed enough for repacking, then refrozen in meal size quantities until needed.

For a point of reference, my previous trip to Potthoffs was on 1/23/09 and consisted of: one 40 lb case of chicken quarters ($.49/lb – prices can vary from trip to trip), one 40 lb case of chicken backs ($.59/lb), one 30 lb case of turkey necks ($.79/lb) and one 30 lb case of pork neck bones ($.69/lb) for a total of $83.60.

Usually I feed the dogs in a x-pen set up in 0ur basement, but they were “helping” me while I was bagging the meat, so they just ate their dinner outside.