I buy Beef Kidney, Beef Heart, and Chicken Liver at Wal Mart very very affordably.
I buy Pork Heart at an asian market.

I know Heart isn't considered organ meat.

 

You must not be shopping at Food Lion! roflmao Chicken livers by the truck load around here. They come in a little container and are dirt cheap! Gizzards too! Pork brains, chicken feet, lamb fries ...:biggrin:

 

You're right, I was at Harris Teeter! Guess I'm gonna have to break down and go to Food Lion or Walmart. I REALLY try to avoid Food Lion if at all possible around here.....small, crowded aisles, dirty, full of screaming kids......gee, am I stereotyping or what :biggrin: They are actually building a Food Lion version of Trader Joes on the corner of my road called "Bloom". Don't know what they'll carry but it'll be almost walking distance. They killed off the cows on the farm that was there to build it.

 

I usually buy a package of unfrozen slices of beef liver from the meat department but when they are out I get a package of frozen slices. They also have little containers of chicken liver.

As for kidney or any other organs, I have a difficult time finding them. I could order them in bulk but I don't feed that much organ. I buy beef heart in 60lb cases and that lasts me a long time.

 

I wouldn't worry about finding organ meats for a while. If you're not going full raw, you'll only want to give just tiny amounts to avoid diarrhea and vomiting because organs are SUPER rich especially to a newbie raw eater. Start out very, very small. Feed only about the size of the end of your pinkie finger for the first few feedings of organs. That package of beef liver you found at the store would literally last you for a few months to begin with. It wouldn't last as long if you were to feed full raw of course!

 

Well, we're thinking about a comprimise. My husband REALLY didn't like the whole chicken on the floor idea. Rocky threw up after it and that kind of sealed the deal. Since they are his dogs (and his house) too, he gets to have an input into their lives. So I checked out the pre-made raw food like primal and bravo but Chelsy couldn't eat it. It was way too mushy for her to pick up in her mouth and she just sort of mashed it around the plate.

So now we are thinking about making our own food. Taking the meat and grinding the bones, and then making the rest of the meat kind of chunky so chelsy can actually eat it (think like a beef stew). He's even looking at a meat grinder made special for dog food that will grind bones. They will still get recreational bones for their teeth. I'm not sure yet if it will be totally raw or he'll want me to sear it just a tiny bit but we'll work on that. I figure one step at time.

Meanwhile I took Chelsy back to my original vet today and he did a thorough workup on her eyes. Found out that she had an ulcer on each eye that was causing her problems and also a subluxated lens. She's on antibiotic drops for a week and then we'll see how she does. This should make her feel much better. I'm going to start her on a little of the seared chunky chicken this week added to her regular food, just to get her used to eating it.

 

RFD..i thought beef heart was a rich muscle meat...sort of a bridge to organ....

i feed beef heart as part of a meal...

are you equating beef heart to organs like kidney/spleen/pancreas, etc.?

 

My local super Walmart carries beef and calf liver (usually frozen) and also beef kidney. Rumba is the brand. They also have ox tail cheap and tongue and hearts. They also have the little white tubs of chicken organs.

I can get all kinds of pork organs at the asian grocery store and they are dirt cheap. I got a huge tray of pig tongue and heart (I know, not organs), pig uterus and pig kidney for like $3.00.

The asian market also has chicken and duck feet really cheap and those are convenient to feed alongside an organ meal to keep the stools firm.

We are in Kansas and have a bison farm about an hour from here. They sell organs for a reasonable price as well.

 

would that bison farm be willing to sell you trim? and other goodies?

 

I always try to suggest when possible and people can afford it to use grass fed/hormone free organs.

 

I found lamb heart, liver, and kidneys at Whole Foods that said "Fed a vegetarian diet." I know that doesn't mean grass fed, but is it at least better than the ones that don't say anything on them? Corn eating lambs are better than carnivore lambs!....

 

We feed our dogs outside most of the time, so they can take their meat to wherever their "spot" is in the back yard. They always seem to want to "season" their food with dirt and leaves!

When did Rocky throw up? Its normal for a dog that isn't used to raw foods to vomit after eating raw for the first time. Its normal. If he vomited right after eating and just food came out, give him a chance to re-eat it. This is just regurgitation, which is also normal. Sometimes dogs didn't do a good enough job chewing the first time so they feel they need to do it again. Sometimes dogs wont eat it back up, but at least give him a chance to.

If he did vomit a while after eating, and only liquid/bile and some bone pieces came up, tell your husband not to worry about that. Newly switched dogs can get what we call the "hunger pukes" where they will vomit up a bit of bile since they are not used to having an empty system so fast. Raw takes about a quarter of the time to digest compared to kibble. So a kibble fed dog pretty much always has food in their system. But a raw fed dog has food in their system for 6-12 hours tops, which can bring on the hunger pukes. Eventually this will go away, but it can help to feed more meals frequently rather than just one big one. The downside to doing this is that the smaller the RMBs you give the more of a choking hazard they can be, depending on the dog (chewers vs. gulpers).

If you are going to do homecooked I can't provide much advice, since I don't have experience there. But I do know that if you go this route you have to add in some kind of starch (rice or potato) into it as a major component for fiber (raw bones replace a dog's need for fiber). You also have to add in a lot of supplements to replace the bone nutrition since you cannot feed cooked bones at all. This is all around a more difficult and time consuming route to go, but still better and natural than anything commercially made. Although, it doesn't provide dental hygiene benefits either I would still "supplement" a homecooked diet with an occasional RMB for scraping tartar.

Please don't hesitate to ask any and all questions, and tell you hubby to ask them as well. Become informed and make a decision based on a good variety of information about all the aspects of home prepared diets, whether it be raw or cooked. At least this way you can make an informed decision :biggrin:

 

Rocky threw up a day after he had the bone and it was just bile and some bone bits. I think it was because it was 100 degrees outside that day and he had to stay outside for a half hour while the dryer repair guy was here.

We are still going to give them the bone with the meat, just put the bones thru the grinder first. My husband found a grinder that is for raw feeders and says it can do chicken and turkey bones. He just really objects to giving them a whole raw chicken quarter complete with whole bones. So, it won't be like a 'homecooked' kind of diet. More like a raw chunky chicken with some of the whole chicken ground up, thing. They will get plenty of bones to eat. I just may have to start out by cooking it a little tiny bit to get him used to the idea and then make it more and more raw as time goes by. We're talking just searing it in the pan a little here.

So, it will be chunky chicken meat and ground up chicken quarters and wings to start with. I will just need to ask you about what proportion of ground meat and bones to actual meat chunk ratio they should get or should I just give them all ground chicken quarters at first and make it a very coarse grind? I won't be adding anything like carrots or vegies or anything like that like a barf kind of thing. It's gonna take a few days to get the grinder so I"m just stocking up on the chicken quarters this week because they are on sale. Also, I have a stack of 95% canned food still left to use up.

 

If you are giving whole ground quarters you shouldn't have to add anything in at all. Just feed these and nothing else raw for two weeks straight. Then I would add in ground turkey alternating with the chicken. Then maybe find some pork that could be ground like spare ribs or riblets.

Ground raw is better than kibble thats for sure. And if you're giving rec bones for chewing/scraping tartar you should be in good shape. I'm really glad that you're are going to feed raw, it really will help with a lot of things.

 

I wouldn't probably grind up a bunch of meat all at once as this is how the bacteria is started, if at all possible it would be best to grind as you feed.

 

That's what I'll do, then. We have a little bitty chest freezer and I threw two big packs of chicken quarters in there since they were on sale. Since he's ordering an electric grinder that is suppose to be able to just whiz thru bones, I'll be able to just do one meal at a time and make it kind of big for Chelsy. The dogs are really looking forward to it! They really loved the pre-made raw but it was just some samples and had a lot of extra ingredients in it that they didn't really need. And Chelsy loved gnawing on the wing, she just never managed to actually get any meat off of it. I'm sure they are going to be real happy once I get them settled on real meat. Rocky had always been a meat eater. Won't even eat EVO biscuits or any kind of dog biscuits! I"ll let you know how it goes.

 

Louis also puked the first two times he had a raw meal. The first time it was mostly bile and undigested chunks of broccoli he stole from the bird. I blamed it on the broccoli because I wanted to (though now I realize it probably was him adjusting or hunger pukes). The second time it was liquid, carrots (once again stolen from the birds...) and bone fragments. So I blamed the carrots. It doesn't matter that I was probably blaming the poor vegetables unjustly since he has been stealing them from the birds and never puked them up until he had raw! Because...he hasn't puked up a raw meal since then, which was almost 3 months ago :biggrin:

We feed Louis outside on the deck. Yesterday it rained so I let him drag a chicken thigh all over the kitchen floor. It made a mess but he eventually decided to plop down on the kitchen rug and go to town on it. Oh well, the thing was 4 bucks I'm still figuring out what to do for rainy days or when the winter months come. Then again, Louis practically has an arctic coat...

Don't give up on the raw, and don't give up on the husband either! Mine objected to it a lot when I first started suggesting it. He didn't like the bacteria, the mess, the bone crunching, etc. Despite his objections, I slowly worked in my arguments and snuck in raw meals here and there. He is still not used to how little Louis poops when he eats raw (husband is on the kibble poop schedule, which is basically poop every time we take the dog out) It's been almost 3 months and he's still not 100% on board. But...he definitely has improved and warmed up to it a bit more. He has now come to accept that weekends are raw days, no questions asked! Although I am the one who mainly prepares the meals and goes meat searching, he is starting to help and partake. Good luck! It may not happen over night, but it WILL happen :wink:

 

Whole foods is safe to say is grass fed/hormone free,:wink: my dogs love lamb anything!:biggrin: