1 month of raw feeding

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Shalista
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Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2015 10:04 pm

1 month of raw feeding

Post by Shalista »

Hey so there's been some interest and some doubts about the amount of work raw feeding takes. I am by no means an expert and I'm pretty new at raw feeding but I figured I'd open a bit of a window into my experiences with it.

To start with I have a 3 (almost 4) year old Rat Terrier named Bax.

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He's about 11 pounds now but I've been trying to put some weight on him. Upping food amounts is easy with raw feeding. To do that I've been employing some pretty simple math made easy with this raw feeding spreadsheet.

I tend to buy my meat from the local supermarket and I try to buy enough to last a month. I buy breasts usually, which are pricier but easier to cut up. Today I bought a mixture of breasts and thighs since I needed the bones from the thighs.

I bought 16 pounds of meat total.
9 pounds of thighs at $.99/lb
7 pounds of breasts at $1.99/lb
1 bag of frozen peas at $4.49
1 bag of frozen broccoli at $1.99
1 can of pumpkin puree at $1.49
In total I spent $29.04 on dog food

I made 34 meals with 16 thigh bones.

I started preparing his food at 6:40pm and ended at 7:36. If an hour once a month seems like a lot of time consider it just spending two minutes with your dog once a night for a month. It's not a huge investmant of time.

I cut the meat by slicing out the thigh bone and putting it in its own baggy. I don't break the bones into daily portions because I'm squeamish about bones breaking. Instead I give him a whole thigh bone or drumstick every few weeks. Thigh bones are put into their own big bag. Bax's meals go in a separate bag for daily use. I weigh Bax's meat and get it roughly to the weight I want, then I bag it. once all the meat is bagged I make a second pass adding a teaspoon of pumpkin to every bag, then again to add half a cup of frozen peas and half a cup of broccoli. All the meals then get put into a big bag and frozen. Every night I just go to the freezer, take out a bag, and dump it onto a towel for Bax to eat.

Here's my assembly area. You'll notice the heavy duty knife and scale. A good knife will save you A LOT of trouble. A scale is also a must for weighing out the meat.
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YUM! He eats better than I do!
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34 meals ready to go!
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Pardon the mess but this is what a months worth of food for an 11-pound dog looks like in a freezer. It takes up a lot of space (but it's totally worth it!)
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So that's what a months worth of dog food looks like!
Baxter (AKA Bax, Chuckles, Chuckster) Rat Terrier, born 01/16/13
Shalista
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Re: 1 month of raw feeding

Post by Shalista »

Another month another batch of dinners. Here's what I got for him this month.
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There're a couple of new additions I wanted to try this time.

First, we have the pork hocks on the right. This isn't going to be for dinner but I counted it anyway to show a raw snack that can be offered. They were cheap, $1.79 a pound I think, so I couldn't resist. Bax had dietary problems and is sensitive to a lot of food that isn't raw. (He potties around the house if he gets something he shouldn't.) So finding the frozen hocks was a real steal. I'm going to be offering them instead of Kongs since they'll take awhile for him to get through. The only downside is that I need to be there when he's done so that he doesn't start gnawing to hard on the bones.

In the middle, we have the liver. I didn't have liver in my last post and that's because it's been difficult to find lately. My grocery store had it and I grabbed it as fast as I could. It's probably the priciest thing on the counter ($$ per pound) there but he only needs a small amount so I took it.

On the left, you'll notice I added green beans. I was hoping to give him more veggies because he loves them so much. He completely ignores any meat on his towel until he has finished his veggies first. Unfortunately, the green beans did not go over well. I gave him one and he mouthed it a bit before spitting it out. So no green beans.

It went a little bit faster this time because I wasn't messing with bones. Preparing thighs, wings, and drumsticks always take longer than cutting up breast meat. (It's why I prefer to feed Bax breast meat, it's more expensive but saves me the aggravation of deboning). The reason I chose to use only breast meat this time was because I still had bones in the freezer to feed him and any more would be a waste. (He only eats about a bone a week.)

I added a little more pumpkin to my dinners this time but didn't account for that in my purchasing so I ran out. Next month I'll probably buy him two cans of pumpkin.

All told this was my receipt.
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I did some fancy sharpy math to remove the Mocha Java ice cream I got. Hey! A girls gotta eat too!

So the total is:
Broccoli $1.99
Peas $1.99
Pumpkin $1.49
Liver $5.19
Chicken breast $23.57
Total $34.23

(I removed the Ice cream with my quick sharpy math, and I also removed the beans because he won't eat them, and the hocks because those are for snacking and are not part of dinner math.)

So how did I do for fast cheap meal prep for Bax?

I started meal prep at 2:02 PM and finished at 2:50 PM.

I made 42 dinners.

I spent $34.23 on food.

48 minutes to make 42 dinners at $.81 a dinner or $24.45 for a month of raw food.

Not bad!
Baxter (AKA Bax, Chuckles, Chuckster) Rat Terrier, born 01/16/13
AliceGrimm
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Re: 1 month of raw feeding

Post by AliceGrimm »

Thank you so much for making this thread and showing so many awesome pictures of your process. I guess my only question is... How do you know you have obtained the correct balance of nutrients and things for your dog?

What do you do for vitamins or other things? What do dogs need nutrition wise? And do puppies need more nutrition than other dogs?

Thank you so much!!

I am so sorry it took me so long to get back to you and thank you for putting the time in and doing this!!
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Nettle
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Re: 1 month of raw feeding

Post by Nettle »

Puppies need the same nutrition, but more food in proportion to adults. If you think about it, there are no young animals that eat differently from adults once they are weaned. Puppies need 4 small meals a day. Puppies do NOT need milk. The best milk for puppies is already in their mother, and once weaned they lose the ability to digest it.

If any organisation or individual tries to tell you what logic doesn't support - think if they are making money from it! :lol: Special 'puppy food' is a marketing ploy.

Vet. Ian Billinghurst also has a puppy-feeding book that is very good, called Grow Your Pups With Bones. But his Give Your Dog A Bone covers all bases if you can only afford one book.
A dog is never bad or naughty - it is simply being a dog

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JudyN
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Re: 1 month of raw feeding

Post by JudyN »

As for vitamins, etc. - bear in mind that the whole of an animal will contains what it needs to live. So if I consume sufficient vitamins & minerals, I will have those vitamins and minerals at the right levels within my body. Which means that eaten in my entirety, I would be a perfectly balanced meal :shock: Heaven help me if Jasper learns to read and comes on to the forum :lol:

But this means that, simplistically, if you feed meat, bone and some organs there's no need to think your dog is missing out on anything. OK, some argue that because of the way animals are fed now they might not provide the same levels of nutrition, but if you chuck in, say, some veggies and the occasional egg you've pretty well got it covered.

(If you want to read more, search on the internet for the 'prey model' - or the 'frankenprey model', so called because you might well be feeling the meat of a chicken, bones of a lamb, liver of a deer, and so on.)
Jasper, lurcher, born December 2009
Shalista
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Re: 1 month of raw feeding

Post by Shalista »

I feed Bax veggies because A) i dont feel like i feed organs as much as i should B) sometimes he needs a little extra fiber C) he LOVES them.

If he didn't like his veggies so much I'd probably stop feeding them.

EDIT: when i say "he needs a little extra fiber" what im mostly talking about is his penchant for going outside and doing NOTHING but eat grass. He'd refuse to potty at all and just frantically scarf down any grass in his path. He did this when he was on kibble too (much more often in fact). I've fixed it by adding veggies to his diet and he doesn't do that anymore.
Baxter (AKA Bax, Chuckles, Chuckster) Rat Terrier, born 01/16/13
Shalista
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Re: 1 month of raw feeding

Post by Shalista »

Another day, another dollar, and another month of raw feeding!

Here's what I got this time.

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I mixed things up a little bit this time. Firstly, I learned from last time and got the bigger tin, double the pumpkin (see, old dogs can learn new tricks too!). I also got Bax brussel sprouts this time since the string beans didn't go over to well last time. He LOVED the sprouts! Not only that but since they were frozen he got some good gnawing in on them. I'm all for playing with your food and if Bax needs to work a little harder for his greens I'm a fan!

Bax enjoyed his first sprout.

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All told this is my receipt. No fancy ice cream math this time.

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I did end up doing some crazy math though out of sheer laziness this time around. I didn't feel like taking out my scale to weight out Bax's breast meat so I wondered, "How much does half a chicken breast weigh?" With the package being 6.49 pounds, 9 pieces of chicken in it (or 18 halves) I divided the 6.49 by 18 and got .361 pounds per half chicken breast.

You may remember my Dog Food Spreadsheet which helps me calculate how much meat Bax should be eating to maintain his body weight. I checked to see how much meat Bax should be eating if he's consuming 4% of his body weight daily and the answer was .352 pounds. Close enough for government work! I said heck with the weighing and just chopped all the breasts in half and stuffed them in the bags. Some days he may end up with more, some with less, but he'll survive the inconvenience.

I started meal prep at 7:14pm and finished at 7:47pm.

I spent 33 minutes making Bax's dinners so I guess not weighing the meat helped speed things along!

I made 36 dinners.

$33.28 for 36 dinners is $.92 per meal or $27.73 for a months worth of food.

I think it was a little extra this month because I've been adding more veggies (He got an extra quarter cup in almost every bag) and I doubled his pumpkin. No regrets!

Bax approves of this months batch!
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(Apologies for the crummy Bax quality. The zoom on my phone is not... excellent.)
Baxter (AKA Bax, Chuckles, Chuckster) Rat Terrier, born 01/16/13
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Nettle
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Re: 1 month of raw feeding

Post by Nettle »

Lucky little dog that you do this for him.


I don't weigh food either. If the dogs start to look a bit porky I cut down and if they start to look too lean I give extra. But normally they don't do either. The human brain (even mine) is amazing! :lol:
A dog is never bad or naughty - it is simply being a dog

SET YOURSELF UP FOR SUCCESS
Shalista
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Re: 1 month of raw feeding

Post by Shalista »

That's one of the main reasons I keep posting on this. This isn't rocket science! You don't need a degree in dog nutrition to raw feed. It doesn't take forever to make the food. It doesn't cost an arm and a leg to feed raw.

And you really can't beat the feeling when you drop it on the ground for them. Knowing that Bax is getting the very best dog food possible just makes me feel so good! I'm not a perfect furmom but I can provide a healthy meal for him.

So many times when I tell people that I feed raw they act like I'm doing this crazy difficult thing that they'd NEVER be able to do. That they just don't have the time, or that it's to expensive. The truth is, so long as you have a freezer, you can feed raw :lol:
Baxter (AKA Bax, Chuckles, Chuckster) Rat Terrier, born 01/16/13
JudyN
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Re: 1 month of raw feeding

Post by JudyN »

Yup, I thought for ages it would be too hard - I struggle enough with cooking for the humans and have often wished I could just feed them kibble :lol: And I have a guardy dog so thought bones would be out of the question. But nope - it really is easy.

Still want to feed the humans kibble though...
Jasper, lurcher, born December 2009
Erica
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Re: 1 month of raw feeding

Post by Erica »

If they made complete human meals that weren't disgustingly textured "protein shakes," I'd probably have a few in my cupboard/fridge ;) I'm not always up for cooking lol
Delta, standard poodle, born 6/30/14
Shalista
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Re: 1 month of raw feeding

Post by Shalista »

closest thing to that ive found is Blue Apron where they mail you the meal fixings with easy to follow recipes.
Baxter (AKA Bax, Chuckles, Chuckster) Rat Terrier, born 01/16/13
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