Tasty Tuesday: Lamb bones

I found a great local supplier. She raises lamb on pasture, with no added grain, no antibiotics, no hormones. And, she is willing to sell bones, heart, liver, and kidney for great prices! All of the products are human grade too, which makes me feel awesome about feeding it to my dogs. I'm never comfortable feeding them things that aren't okay for humans.

Meaty meaty lamb bones

I generally don't buy any items that are simply called "bones" because I am a believer that all bone should be accompanied by a large amount of meat. These lamb bones, though, are awesome. They have a thick layer of meat on most of them, and fed as part of a meal made up of liver or kidney or hearts, they provide a decent amount of chewing work.

Koira always chews up her bones really carefully, spending lots of time on them. This is MUCH better than what some dogs do, which is gulping down the chunks as fast as possible. Gulpers are more likely to have problems like choking or blockages because they just try to shove the food in as fast as possible.

Plus, it is nice to just be able to occupy my dogs for a good 20+ minutes just with feeding them their breakfast. This particular bone session was preceded by a half pound of liver each. The liver was sucked down in a few minutes with a few chews. Pallo even likes this grass-raised lamb liver, though he turns his nose up at all other kinds of liver, or organs in general. It must taste good even to him!

And, for those bone scraps small enough that I worry about giving them to the dogs- into the crock pot to make stock! Home made stock or broth is really the only way to go, and I've found that using stock like this to freeze into cubes is a great treat for the dogs, and encourages them to drink more water if I toss some in their water bowl at events. And, with making it myself, I don't have to worry about excessive sodium or all those sneaky added chemicals and ingredients like onion.