Up north there are a multitude of livestock producers located within just a few miles my place, six hog barns and several cattle producers. The hog barns are mainly finishing barns, meaning the hogs come from a nursery and weigh around 50-70 pounds and leave when they are market weight, somewhere around 280 pounds. One barn is wean-to-finish, so the pigs come in much smaller, sometimes as small as 10-12 pounds. The wean-to-finish barns have a higher death loss, but all the big hog barns suffer losses. The producers normally call the rendering truck to haul away the deads, but after speaking with them they were fine with me picking up the deads instead of paying the rendering company. Back when I had 10 adult Great Danes, I would make the rounds to the different barns every week or two to pick up 'dog food'. In the winter it was just placed behind a building out of sight of the house and they would eat as they pleased. In the summer I froze the whole hogs in a 28' chest freezer until I needed to feed them. The Danes would eat every bit of a 280 pound hog except for the lower jawbone - hair, hide, meat, bones, brains, organs, feet, stomach contents. It's how and what canines evolved to eat.
If a neighbor with cattle lost a cow, they would often call me to see if I needed dog food before they called the rendering company, and they would normally deliver the carcass to my farm. I didn't get many cows, which is good since they were much harder for me to deal with due to their size and weight.There was also a lot more waste in the form of bones that the dogs couldn't eat.
By the time I bought the land in TN and started traveling back and forth seasonally, I was down to just 2 Danes, and there didn't appear to be much for livestock near me in the south. I was happy to find the little independent grocery store that was willing to order me 40 pound cases of chicken backs, pork necks, turkey necks, fish, and other meats and organs. I feed a varied diet of meat and bone from different animals but now days the main portion of dog food consists of chicken instead of pork. The backs have a nearly perfect ratio of meat to bone, and the bones are small enough for the Yorkie to eat. Contrary to what many believe, raw bones, even poultry bones, will not splinter and choke a dog, only cooked bones splinter into razor-sharp shards. I would never feed any sort of cooked bone to a dog unless I've used it for making bone broth and it has been cooked to the point that I can smush it between my fingers.
The best part is the price... I pay $20 for a 40 pound box of fresh backs. That's cheaper, and it lasts longer, than 50 pounds of crap-in-a-bag dog food. It's also much higher quality protein, this is human food after all, not some animal by-product meal scraped off the rendering plant floor. The Yorkie gets one small back per day, my daughter's Shepard mix gets 2 or 3 backs a day depending on size, the Golden Retriever used to get 3 or 4 a day, and the Dane got 6 or so, again depending on size and the body condition of the individual dog. Raw fed dogs drink substantially less water since they don't have to turn the dry dog food into a slurry in their gut order to digest it, they poop a tiny amount compared to kibble fed dogs since they utilize everything instead of having to poop out all the corn and grains that they can't digest, and the poop dries up and crumbles away to powder in just a couple days so you never have to pick up the yard. And the vet has always commented on how clean my dog's teeth are, even into advanced old age they're still shiny and white.
So today I picked up the case of chicken backs. Once home I put a half dozen in them in the big stockpot along with a gallon bag of frozen veggie bits from the freezer and it's simmering away on the stove to make chicken stock that I will can later this evening. There's not a ton of meat on a back, but plenty to make a nice stock. The remaining backs were put in gallon zip-lock bags, 6 backs per bag, and stacked in the chest freezer. And my daughter's dog got his dinner for the day.
I've always heard it's the best way to feed a dog, but you have to have a good source nearby or it would get really expensive. I compromised by adding Wild Blue canned meat, poultry or fish to organic dry food. That;s expensive enough!
ReplyDeleteWell,it may not be organic, but I know a lot of raw feeders that shop Walmart for the 10 pound bags of chicken quarters. I don't shop Walmart, but I do look for small independent grocers that will order cases of whatever you want. Large chain stores also have some great deals, the local Kroger recently had a bunch of salmon on sale for 1.69 a pound that I bought for the dogs (last day to sell it so fire sale prices). Pork will often go on sale here for 1.49 or 1.69 for a huge roast, and the guys will cut it into whatever size I need. The dogs don't get much beef due to the crazy high prices.
DeleteIt used to be that you could get all sorts of great stuff very cheap or sometimes free from a butcher, but the last time I took a steer to the locker he couldn't even give me back the hide/head/feet/stomach etc. Said there were new state regulations that prohibited it.
I often heard that if you wanted your dog to be mean you should feed him raw meat. Granted I have no first hand knowledge of this as I do not have a dog.
ReplyDeleteNow you go and prove that that is incorrect. I never knew you could feed a dog raw chicken, hogs or fish. Sounds like it is a lot healthier than the traditional dog food.
MsB, I've never had a dog get mean from feeding raw. My daughter's Golden Retriever was food aggressive in that he would make a very fast snatch-and-grab for it, (and might get your hand along with the meat) but he was that way with any food long before he was switched to raw. The other dogs always take/took it very gently, and are trained from the beginning to eat on a towel to keep the mess off the floor.
DeleteI've always believed it was healthier, since that's what they are designed to eat. A dog's digestive tract is very short and straight, not meant for food to sit around in there for long. Raw meat and bone passes through in about 4-5 hours, while kibble takes 12-16 hours to make it from one end of a dog to the other and even after all that time they don't utilize nearly as much of it.
I've never had a dog develop allergies, never had to have a dog's teeth cleaned, never had one develop skin problems, and despite always having large breeds that are very prone to hip and joint problems I've never experienced any, I believe due in large part to the proper protein and nutrient content of their diet.
You give them chicken backs bones and all or are you cooking the meat off first?
ReplyDeletePP, I do cook some for myself as chicken stock, but the dogs get the raw backs just as they come out of the box. If I was raising the chickens myself the dogs would get the whole bird. I do occasionally buy whole roasters or fryers for them but the backs are the cheapest around here. And yes, they need the bone for the vitamins and minerals contained there. You have to watch their stools, if they aren't getting enough bone they can get very dark and loose, too much bone (think pork ribs which have little meat but lots of bone) the stools get white and chalky and dry. Chicken leg quarters are pretty good and often available here for .89 a pound in 10 pound bags.
ReplyDeleteWhen I had all the Danes I always fed 'prey model' meaning they got the entire animal, whether that was hog, deer, or cow. They always started at the flank where the skin was thinnest, ate the organs and stomach contents first and the the hindquarters (ham) next, so the first day or two they would get loose. Once they started eating legs, shoulders and sides they firmed up again with the increased bone content. With smaller food (chicken, rabbit, squirrel etc) they eat the entire animal and the meat:bone:organ ratio is perfect.
Unless strictly organic free range....chicken is pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting. When we had dogs (2 LGDs) I fed them as much raw meaty bones as I could afford, but being in the south, it was difficult to find it economically. Most of my grocery budget went to feeding the dogs! Sounds like you've found excellent solutions for that. Good examples for the rest of us.
ReplyDelete