Tasty Tuesday: Dog Meat

In this house, dog meat is what I call the meat that is meant for feeding the dogs. I find that I rarely purchase meat for me to make for myself, and yet I regularly purchase huge quantities of meat to feed my dogs and cats. Each of the dogs eats roughly one pound of meat per day, while each cat eats about a half pound. We go through 3 lbs of meat per day or about 90 lbs per month. Crazy.

My freezer is pretty constantly packed full of dog meat. Here it is from last night after I packed in 50 lbs of lamb and beef. I don't have a huge chest freezer- I think this one is the smallest freezer than can even be called a chest freezer, at 3.5 cubic feet. The stats for it say it can hold about 122 lbs of frozen meat, which sounds like a lot until you remember I go through 90 lbs per month.

Yesterday I spent a portion of my evening making various meat deals. I no longer feel at all shady meeting up in random parking lots to transfer bags and boxes of meat into my car- though I certainly get some weird looks sometimes! My favorite local lamb farmer met up with me down at the park so I could pick up lamb liver, kidney, and heart. I feed the hearts as regular meaty meat, and my dogs love it. They also get a meal of liver once every two weeks or so, and kidney every two weeks as well. I really like getting local grass fed liver and kidney for my dogs, since these toxin cleansing organs can be pretty nasty from commercially/conventionally raised animals.

I feed based on the idea that 80% of my dogs' and cats' diets should be meaty meat (as much as possible of that meat being red meat), 10% should be edible bone, 5% should be liver, and 5% other organs. Since these are guidelines over time rather than strict rules for every meal, I tend to thaw out whatever is at the top of the freezer and toss it to the beasts at feeding time- within reason, of course. The white paper wrapped packages in this shot are of boneless beef that I picked up at 10 last night in a Lowes parking lot. When I pull one of them out to feed the beasts, I'll let the whole thing thaw, then cut it into meal sized portions, distribute what is being eaten that day, and stick the other chunks into the fridge to feed through until it is gone.

I do want to add that the package of chicken wings was not purchased for the purpose of feeding the dogs. I got that free, along with a good amount of other chicken, after a family member realized it had been in their freezer past the recommended amounts of time. It is a bit freezer burned, but the dogs and cats don't care. Wings and other small parts like that are not recommended for raw feeding dogs due to their small size making them a choking hazard. But since I have them, I feed them or other boney meat 2-3 meals per week to provide the needed amount of bone in the beasts' diets.

And this last shot is of some lamb kidney from grass raised Oregon lambs, sliced up into smaller pieces. Pallo seems to have an aversion to the texture of both kidney and liver, so the best way to get him to eat his organs is to cut it up into small pieces like this, freeze solid, and then toss to him as treats. I let them freeze like this until solid before tossing them into a zip top bag to be fed to the beasty.

Does anyone else feed their dogs raw? Or have any questions about raw feeding?