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Raw Diet Basics
Raw Meaty Bones
Muscle Meat
Organ Meat
Veggie Mush
Benefits
Drawbacks
Getting Started
Premade vs DIY
How Much to Feed
Feeding a Raw Diet
Grinding
Recreational Bones
Planning Orders
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Helpful Tips
Muscle Meat - basically this is any meat without bones.
Boneless Chicken breasts, ground beef, turkey breast, beef or bison
steaks, beef heart (it really is a muscle and not an organ), pork butt,
lamb, deer meat, etc. Any boneless meat.
For our dogs we use beef heart and ground turkey.
The beef heart is rich in Taurine – an amino acid that has links
to helping control seizures. Dogs do not have a dietary requirement for taurine since they
can make it out of Vitamin B and amino acids currently in their system. Cats
cannot process taurine and must have some every day.
Taurine has also been shown to be a very effective supplement for
congestive heart failure.
All that being said, we use beef heart for two
reasons. First – our Cocker
Tazer. We ran out of beef
heart right around Christmas time in 2002 and the dogs went without it for
about 10 days We fed goat
meat instead. On day 10 Tazer
had a seizure. The first –
and so far only – seizure he’s ever had.
Cockers are known to have epilepsy as a health concern.
The blood chemistry and thyroid tests all came back normal on Tazer.
We went out and bought beef heart right away and now make sure that
Tazer gets some every day. And
he’s seizure free. Coincidence? Maybe, but one we're not taking a chance with.
The other reason we use beef heart is that it is an
economical muscle meat. Ground
turkey, when on sale, is a close second.
That’s why we use those two as our main muscle meats.
We try to add variety every week by offering the dogs something new. Once it was goat meat, another time it was bison tongue. When our friends go hunting we get some deer meat. We watch the grocery stores for sales and stock up when the price is right.
To give you an idea - here is how we package the beef heart we get. We buy these in bulk - 60 lb cases. The hearts themselves usually weigh in around 3-5 pounds each. Some butchers and grocery stores will carry this item - check the meat department if you don't buy in bulk. And if you don't see it - ask if they will get it for you!
The Beef Hearts we get come frozen. They usually take 24 – 48 hours to defrost. Since they come whole we can usually remove one heart at a time as they defrost.
Here is a top and bottom view of the Beef Heart:
We use the knife and plastic zip bags for the heart. The bag is in the container on the scale just to help hold it open - we don't bother weighing the beef heart since we're feeding 6 dogs and usually have to defrost two bags at once anyway. If you are feeding only one or two dogs you could figure each days amount and weigh out exactly that much.
The heart gets cut up and stuffed into the plastic bags – although you could use the plastic containers as well.
We
try to cut the heart so that we have some fat and some meat in each piece.
That way we can balance the fat and meat better when we're serving
it. If one dog ends up with
mostly fat, next time they get mostly meat, and so on.
Balance over time – it’s a great thing!
Hearts
are easier to cut if they are still slightly frozen but harder to mash
into the containers or bags. The
unfrozen heart is pliable and you can stuff more into the bags or
containers than the frozen.
The
ground turkey comes in one pound tubes - so those just get tossed in the
freezer. Goat meat comes on the bone - we need to cut it all off and
then package it. If we find ground beef on sale we package it in
plastic zip bags and freeze. And so on!
Feel free to email me at info@rawdogranch.com if you have any questions!