# Raw feeders - what's on your menu?



## Brattina88 (Jul 2, 2008)

I thought this would be an interesting thread, I did a quick search and didn't see anything, so I appologize if it's been done already. 

What's on your raw feeding menu for a week? What do you feed, do you supplement? Oh, and how much your dog/s weighs 

I thought it'd be interesting to see - and maybe get some new ideas from others to add to the rotation!


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## littleboodog (Jun 28, 2010)

I feed my 80 pound Lab mostly whole chicken and beef. Once a day. Sometimes some chicken liver and pork country style ribs although I guess they're not really ribs. Doesn't matter. I can get whole fresh sardines but are they really okay to feed? I don't supplement. Should I? I have feeding raw for 4 months.


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## JayJayisme (Aug 2, 2009)

http://dogfoodchat.com/forum/raw-feeding/2805-favorite-raw-entrees.html


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## CorgiPaws (Mar 31, 2009)

On a weekly basis I feed:
*Chicken*. I only buy Chicken Leg Quarters because they're the cheapest cut, and easy to cut in half for smaller dogs. 
*Turkey. *I buy whole turkey when they go on sale, or necks.
*Pork. *Ribs or chunks cut off of a picnic roast. 
*Beef. *I give beef ribs and supplement with either a chunk off a brisket or ground beef, depending on what I have. the ribs don't have enough meat to be a meal on their own.
*Lamb.* Breast, cut to the right portion.
*Fish.* Whole talapia, sardines, or bass. I bought a huge carp once and cutting it up was a nightmare, so never again. I rarely use canned fish, but sometimes will use canned salmon, mackeral, or tuna. 
*Goat.* I honestly am not sure what cut it is... 
*Eggs. *I give them once or twice a week whenever I remember.
*Heart*. I prefer to handle whole pork hearts, but sometimes buy the cut up beef hearts too. 
*Liver.* Usually chicken livers as they're the perfect size for my dogs, but sometimes I do beef liver. 
*Kidney.* Beef kidney. 

I also feed any other special sources I can get my hands on as they are avaliable to me, like elk, venison, buffalo, phesent, and quail... but I don't have those on a weekly basis at all. 

I generally feed two meals per day, one rather smaller, one larger. The smaller one is almost always chicken, and the bigger one is... whatever i'm feeding that day. On fish and pork days I usually just skip the chicken because those are pretty affordable sources, too. I preportion all of my days in advance, and toss in a chicken liver, and a chunk of kidney in each day's baggie, rather than doing whole meals of organs. I generally give egg on fish days, and I skip the liver/ kidney on days that i feed whole fish or heart.

Dog's weight/ lbs of food per day:
Grissom, 20lbs, .5 lb per day
Annie, 55lbs, 1.5 lb per day
Chesney, 20 lbs, .75 lb per day (growing puppy)


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## bdb5853 (May 21, 2010)

I have a little guy. 5 pounds. So cornish hens are a staple for bone. I take a regular sized one pound hen and whack it up into about 8 pieces. Each piece is about 2 ounces each. He gets those interspersed throughout the week, about every 3rd day or so. 

In between he gets a couple ounces a day of beef heart, pork tongue, rabbit, or whatever other meat we have on hand. Just got an order from hare-today so I have a big supply of meats and organ grinds.

We usually do organs on the weekend. I remember them that way and he gets a full meal (one ounce of each) of bison liver and kidney alternated with beef liver and kidney or pork/chicken, although the bison is his favorite. I follow with a bony meal and no stool problems. He has an iron stomach. 

We do whole prey occasionally. He eats pinky mice like they are popcorn shrimp.  He's not a big fan of feathers or fur so he doesn't usually get larger prey.

He occasionally gets a premade - stella and chewy's or canned tripe. I use the tripett brand.

He's little so he's easy.


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## dobesgalore (Oct 21, 2009)

Some beef and pork, and loooots of chicken, because its cheap and I can now get all the chicken I want free from a local Tyson chicken house. I also give beef and chicken livers weekly.


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## bdb5853 (May 21, 2010)

dobesgalore said:


> Some beef and pork, and loooots of chicken, because its cheap and I can now get all the chicken I want free from a local Tyson chicken house. I also give beef and chicken livers weekly.


I'm curious how you get the free chickens from Tyson?


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## dobesgalore (Oct 21, 2009)

bdb5853 said:


> I'm curious how you get the free chickens from Tyson?


We have a close family friend who owns chicken houses and raises chickens for Tyson. He probably has 12 houses. I called him the other night asking what he does with the chickens that die daily, and he said he gets them out puts them in a freezer. There is a monthly truck that comes by and gets them all. He told me I am welcome to get all I want out of his freezers.


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## bdb5853 (May 21, 2010)

dobesgalore said:


> We have a close family friend who owns chicken houses and raises chickens for Tyson. He probably has 12 houses. I called him the other night asking what he does with the chickens that die daily, and he said he gets them out puts them in a freezer. There is a monthly truck that comes by and gets them all. He told me I am welcome to get all I want out of his freezers.


What an awesome deal for you!!! Wow!!!


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## dobesgalore (Oct 21, 2009)

bdb5853 said:


> What an awesome deal for you!!! Wow!!!


I am VERY happy! I just wish I had thaught of it sooner! I'm kicking myself for that!:smile:


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## dobesgalore (Oct 21, 2009)

bdb5853 said:


> What an awesome deal for you!!! Wow!!!


Check around where you live at chicken houses. You may the same thing. Never know until you try!:wink:


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## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

dobesgalore said:


> I am VERY happy! I just wish I had thaught of it sooner! I'm kicking myself for that!:smile:


Have you seen the chickens you will be getting? If not, I'm thinking once you do, you won't be as excited. However, I have known people whose dogs ate chickens with feathers on and maybe yours will also. Whether you pluck the feathers or your dogs do, it is a messy job. Personally, I had rather buy them at the grocery store than fool with dead whole intact carcasses with feathers on. My brother has 16 chicken houses and I could get all the free ones my dogs could possibly eat but I have never gotten one chicken from him. :smile:

*ETA:* My brother won't even eat his own chickens because its much easier to buy them at the store than to bother with all the prep work.


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## schtuffy (May 17, 2010)

Is there a particular reason why people choose organ from one type of animal over the other? For instance, would chicken liver be easier to digest than beef liver, or is it all the same? Or is it just a matter of price and availablity?


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## dobesgalore (Oct 21, 2009)

RawFedDogs said:


> Have you seen the chickens you will be getting? If not, I'm thinking once you do, you won't be as excited. However, I have known people whose dogs ate chickens with feathers on and maybe yours will also. Whether you pluck the feathers or your dogs do, it is a messy job. Personally, I had rather buy them at the grocery store than fool with dead whole intact carcasses with feathers on. My brother has 16 chicken houses and I could get all the free ones my dogs could possibly eat but I have never gotten one chicken from him. :smile:
> 
> *ETA:* My brother won't even eat his own chickens because its much easier to buy them at the store than to bother with all the prep work.


Yea, its a lot of work. Last year we raised and slaughterd about 50 ourselves. We are going to do the plucking and organ removal. I don't mind it.


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## whiteleo (Sep 7, 2008)

Alot of people feed chicken liver, I don't think for any other reason than its availability in the stores, all stores carry chicken livers that I've seen.
If your dog isn't fully into the raw feeding program, you'd definitely want to start with chicken over beef as it wouldn't be as rich.

I prefer to feed my dogs lamb liver as I know exactly what I'm getting as I get it from my community food co-op, grass fed, hormone/antibiotic free.


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## DaneMama (Jun 27, 2008)

schtuffy said:


> Is there a particular reason why people choose organ from one type of animal over the other? For instance, would chicken liver be easier to digest than beef liver, or is it all the same? Or is it just a matter of price and availablity?


I choose to feed pork organs because of their size based on relative ease of working with them. Beef livers are HUGE and hard to deal with. Same with beef kidneys. I care about the size mostly with my dogs because three out of four will not voluntarily eat them so we have to shove them down their throats. Which this can get messy if you and I find pork kidneys the perfect size to shove down throats. I won't ever feed chicken livers because they are basically just mush and hard to handle but are perfectly fine to feed. If your dog eats organs voluntarily then what you should do is feed organs from a variety of different sources. 

With that being said, the best and most nutritious organs to feed are from young animals because they are generally more healthy when they were slaughtered and have more to offer. But organs like this can be hard to find.


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## Ania's Mommy (Feb 8, 2009)

danemama08 said:


> With that being said, the best and most nutritious organs to feed are from young animals because they are generally more healthy when they were slaughtered and have more to offer. But organs like this can be hard to find.


Huh. I'd never considered that before.... Makes sense, though. Especially since liver is the body's crap filter. Younger liver = less crap.

I have seen veal liver at WalMart, just never gotten it because it's a tad more expensive.

You've given me something to think about, Natalie...


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## CorgiPaws (Mar 31, 2009)

schtuffy said:


> Is there a particular reason why people choose organ from one type of animal over the other? For instance, would chicken liver be easier to digest than beef liver, or is it all the same? Or is it just a matter of price and availablity?


I pick mine based on: Price, size, availability, and ease of handling. 

My dogs willingly eat everything (except my cocker who refuses heart of any kind) so I don't have to worry about force feeding. 
Chicken Liver is in just about every grocery store, it's cheap, and the size is perfect for my dogs without ever having to cut them or anything. (small dogs get one liver per day. Boxer gets two) 
Sometimes I buy beef liver IF it's on sale and cheap enough to justify it, but I don't like to have to cut it up.
Beef kidney is the ONLY kind of kidney I have easy access to, so that's the kind of kidney i go with. 
I prefer Pork Heart over other kinds of heart because I find it to be less messy (maybe it's where I buy it vs. where i buy beef heart, but pork heart is *clean*) to handle, and perfect size for Annie to eat one whole heart, and grissom and Chesney to split one. The Beef Heart I buy from wal mart is messier, and all sliced up into odd shaped and sized pieces. It has to be on a good sale to convince me.


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

so far, our dogs get beef liver from our co op...i think my dog's beef looks better than what we buy at the store..these are grass fed.....
and they eat it willingly.....it's a treat in the morning with their salmon gelcaps...which they eat...we feed inch cubes every morning....balances out to about 5% of their diet over a week's time.

we also feed beef heart from our co op....so that's the other 5% of the 10% 

our menu consists, so far, of

lamb - shoulder/shanks/leg meat/rib meat
beef - most cuts
chicken (mostly for the bone)
pork
sardines/smelts - whole and frozen
turkey necks/turkey
llama
ground bison - rarely. we don't like ground because bubba is a gulper and gets no benefit from ground
rabbit - soon
maybe venison and bison - still on the fence because of the price and not so sure if the nutritional value makes it worth buying over our price point...


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## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

magicre said:


> we also feed beef heart from our co op....so that's the other 5% of the 10%


For nutritional purposes, heart is not an organ. It is muscle meat. I'm not sure if you are aware of that. It's not that big of deal. Liver is just about the only organ my dogs and cats get and I'm pretty sure it's not 10% of their diet.


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## whiteleo (Sep 7, 2008)

Just to clear things up, beef heart is mentioned here alot because of the price over good beef muscle meat, so people feed heart in place of muscle meat mostly because of cost. 
magicre: You have no worries, you have a great source for muscle meat beef and llama so you can either just feed the heart for variety or not at all.


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## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

whiteleo said:


> Just to clear things up, beef heart is mentioned here alot because of the price over good beef muscle meat, so people feed heart in place of muscle meat mostly because of cost.


I feed it mostly for nutritional purposes. Eventhough its muscle, its very nutritious muscle. Its very high it fat, Iron, and vit B-12 among other things. :smile:


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## GoldenGirl (Mar 31, 2010)

RawFedDogs said:


> For nutritional purposes, heart is not an organ. It is muscle meat. I'm not sure if you are aware of that. It's not that big of deal. Liver is just about the only organ my dogs and cats get and I'm pretty sure it's not 10% of their diet.


Tom,

I feed my golden beef heart once a week. Should I also be adding liver into his weekly rotation with the heart or is it OK to do heart one week and liver the next?

Thanks,
Jean


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

RFD....thanks....and yes, i did know that...

i had read that 5% of the 10% should be liver and the other five per cent should be heart, spleen, thymus, brains, lungs, pancreas, kidney.....etc -- they are richer than other parts of the animal but not organs in the usual sense....

perhaps i didn't say it correctly....

so on a particular day, my dogs might get (now that bubba isn't trying to swallow things whole anymore, well other than that pork rib but we won't talk about that today)....they'll get beef liver and salmon oil gelcaps first thing in the morning....

for breakfast, they'll get one of four proteins i keep in a bin in my fridge....i no longer bag things because what i feed them depends on their poop from the day before...or that morning...

they might get a 1/4 of a chicken back or 1/2 a drumstick plus some beef heart/beef roast or pork butt roast or shoulder roast or lamb shoulder or leg of lamb or 1/2 fish...

they don't get just one protein at a meal.....

yesterday's breakfast was 1/2 drumstick plus beef heart plus botton round beef...
dinner was sardine and lamb shoulder

since i only have two dogs....and neither one has issues with food...i find it so much easier to just pick from an assortment....and then have other things waiting in the freezer to defrost...

takes longer to clean up these days than it does to actually feed them.


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## DaneMama (Jun 27, 2008)

GoldenGirl said:


> Tom,
> 
> I feed my golden beef heart once a week. Should I also be adding liver into his weekly rotation with the heart or is it OK to do heart one week and liver the next?
> 
> ...


It would depend on how much liver you're giving, but you don't need to give much at all. I would say either way is fine, just as long as you get both in on a regular basis! And RFD's name is Bill :wink:


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## GoldenGirl (Mar 31, 2010)

danemama08 said:


> It would depend on how much liver you're giving, but you don't need to give much at all. I would say either way is fine, just as long as you get both in on a regular basis! And RFD's name is Bill :wink:


Thanks for both!

I need to pay better attention.....

- Jean


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## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

magicre said:


> they might get a 1/4 of a chicken back or 1/2 a drumstick plus some beef heart/beef roast or pork butt roast or shoulder roast or lamb shoulder or leg of lamb or 1/2 fish...
> 
> they don't get just one protein at a meal.....
> 
> ...


If you want to feed that way it's fine. It's not wrong but it seems to me you are taking a simple task (feeding dogs) and making it very complex. My dogs never get a fraction of any chicken part and I don't regularly feed multiple protein sources in a meal. It's not bad, just not necessary and IS more complicated.

Nutritionally, it accomplishes nothing. My dogs willl get chicken backs for a meal or quarters, or breasts or they will split a boston butt pork roast or they will get beef heart or they will get fish. It just seems so much simpler to me. I'm not criticizing, just trying to make your job easier. :smile:


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## schtuffy (May 17, 2010)

magicre said:


> RFD....thanks....and yes, i did know that...
> 
> they might get a 1/4 of a chicken back or 1/2 a drumstick plus some beef heart/beef roast or pork butt roast or shoulder roast or lamb shoulder or leg of lamb or 1/2 fish...


Just out of curiosity, since our dogs are around the same size, how do you do 1/2 a drumstick?


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

i know you're not criticising.....and i know when you are, bill LOL...

i like doing it this way....i am the proverbial jewish mother who would overfeed if i didn't measure their food....

i like the variety and since i feed myself and husband using daily measurements, i do the same with the dogs.

it literally takes only minutes to cut a piece a meat, a half a back.....halve a fish......etc....

we think in ounces here....they're too small to think in pounds..in some ways it's easier and in other ways it's harder to feed smaller dogs..especially smush faced dogs....bubba has a lot of trouble getting through a pork rib....so bone is a challenge for us...and since he 'dances with food', it's taken four months for him to only hork things up once, rather than five or six times..

and you know their transition was not fun at all...not for them and certainly for us. we have them beautifully, many thanks....and now we're taking off.....they get a very wide of variety of foods...i just don't balance over time...

the day may come when i do that....i'm a newbie....being only four months in....this keeps them lean and beautiful and i just pick food out based on what their stools were the day before....liver is vitamins plus the salmon gelcap, so they get theirs while my honey and i get ours...it's kind of funny at 4 a.m.

right now, i get such a kick out of this....honest...breakfast for them takes me minutes...i have a polycarbonate container that i keep in the fridge....the next rotation is in the house freezer...the rest has been organised in the garage freezers..

they don't get the same amount each meal..it depends on bubba's girly waist line and malia's ribs....and what they get fed is determined by stools that morning...which is pretty much from what they ate the day before....

malia's almost eleven.....she does well with routines because i do LOL....

schtuffy....when i want to crack something in the middle without splintering it....i take my cleaver and a towel and a cutting board and one whack...these are soft bones...

backs, i just split in half with my hands....

i have found, with these two, they can't go too long without bone and i don't want their meals made up of bone all the time, so i give them a little every other day..and their stools are perfect....

i wouldn't be able to do this if bubba hadn't started slowing down....but he has....so i can now give him pieces of bone, knowing he will crunch at least twice....and malia crunches and is very methodical....after our rotten beginning, i am truly blessed...thanks to bill and natalie and everyone who got us through the first month...whew...


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## whiteleo (Sep 7, 2008)

I remember when I was first starting out my biggest issue with the dogs was they couldn't quite know when they had to poop. If you look back through the raw feeding threads you'll see one that I posted that says "what was that? too funny!:smile:


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