I get asked a lot what Chance eats. So I added a page of pictures of some of what she eats. There is a link to the page on the Prey Model Raw page.
Finally have the elk and venison from the co-op in my freezer! The transport was an hour late but I can't complain since it's run by volunteers, traffic here can be terrible, and the meat I got is cheaper than beef now.
Opened the elk hoping it would be 60 lbs. packaged in 4 bags like some people have gotten. No such luck! 59.97 lbs. of solidly frozen elk meat trim! That's 15" wide by 7" thick by 27" or so tall!!! Didn't open the venison. The 2 boxes fit nicely in the 5 cu. ft. freezer so yay! Even bought myself a new toy just because of this order. A 22" butcher's saw! That way I can carve the blocks up into chunks that are easier to pick up for me and that will fit in the freezer for thawing. Both freezers aren't completely full so there's still room to keep stocking up on lamb breast. I've managed to get just under 27.75 lbs. of lamb breast for Chance. 13.365 lbs. of that was today! The guys at Whole Foods see me and immediately grab the lamb breast out of the meat case. I usually can only get 3 - 4 lbs. of breast at a time since they butcher the carcasses there so I don't know why they had so many today!
Did find out that the Whole Foods closer to our house calls the lamb breast "riblets" and charges $3.00/lb. more! So we don't go there. The 60 lbs. of elk and 60 lbs. of venison I ordered from the co-op in mid-August is finally arriving Thursday! It seems like it has taken forever to get here. I'm super excited to be getting it so we can start introducing it to Chance but I'm dreading it because I'll have to repackage it for easier storage. I'm hoping it will be packaged in packs of 4 per case instead of being frozen in a huge lump. People who have gotten it say it the cases can be packaged either way. The 4 packs-per-case would be so much easier for storage! I had an exciting find yesterday! Icelandic lamb breast for $3.99/lb. from Whole Foods of all places! They only had 2 breasts so I bought then out. For that price I would've bought everything they had. Especially since I don't know if I can get that price again. The price wouldn't come up so the butcher charged me the stew meat price.
I cut up the pig brains I bought from the Asian market. Didn't know what to expect but I did have myself convinced they would be gross. They were still frozen so they came out in the shape of the container and were not the least bit gross. Chance started brain introduction today with a little brain mixed in with her pig spleen. I stopped by Costco yesterday to look at their lamb. Noticed the pork spareribs we buy for Chance have gone up $0.30/lb. in the past week. Sucks! I'm thinking my 60 lbs. of venison and 60 lbs. of elk will be in later this month. The raw co-op has 2 deliveries coming soon that will total almost 6,000 lbs!
I'm trying to find some bone-in lamb cuts for Chance that won't require us to take out a 2nd mortgage. So far they are either very expensive $15.99 per pound or more or they are reasonably priced but come pre-Frenched or they are enhanced with sodium. We went to a Halal butcher today but they didn't have any so I'm going to try another Halal butcher not too far away. We drive by it when we take Chance to the pool and when Chance goes to vet rehab. It looks bigger. Chance was running low on beef so I stocked up on roasts that were on sale and marked down for quick sale. 22 lbs. of beef and I bought them out of all their cheap stuff. I can't believe how fast meat prices are rising. Chickens at Costco went up another 10 cents per pound in just a week or 2. In May I could get beef at Costco for $3.09 per pound and now they have nothing that is under $4.00 per pound! I had planned on ordering rabbits from Hare Today as soon as the raw co-op database opened. We don't get a discount on the product but we get a huge discount on shipping that makes it hard to find a cheaper product locally. But I found out we order from Hare Today almost monthly during the winter so I can wait for a couple of months before I start to get low on rabbit and need more. Tomorrow Chance starts eating pork spleen! She'll transition slowly and then be on spleen for a week.
She had beef tongue for the 1st time a couple of days ago. She loved it and I loved how chewy it was for her. I also cut up my 1st rabbit. It was almost whole, no head or feet but it did have kidneys, liver and heart. And there was 1 lung still attached to the forequarters. This one was much redder than the rabbit hindquarters I had bought months and months ago. That was a nice surprise. Chance isn't crazy about rabbit but I want her to have them for more variety. Especially once the raw co-op Hare Today database opens and I can get them cheap. After months of looking in stores for organs other than kidney and liver I finally had success! Pork spleen and pork brains!!!!!! And it's from a store that didn't make me not want to touch anything.
The spleen is from a local farm which was a big plus since I'm familiar with the place. The store also had cheap beef and pork liver. I only bought the spleen and brains since I have lots of lamb liver, chicken liver and lamb kidney from the raw co-op and plenty of beef kidney still. I have to make sure to save room for that 120 lb. of elk and venison that will come in next month. We're going to start feeding her the many lamb legs I picked up. She's had lamb before, it was her 1st raw food, so I don't think there will be any problems with the lamb and we'll be able to introduce it faster. Then we'll start introducing the spleen. Once she's good on the spleen we can introduce the brains. The American Veterinary Medical Association approved a raw feeding policy at their national annual convention. The AVMA now advises dog and cat owners to avoid feeding raw or undercooked meats.
Unless the meat has been sanitized to remove any pathogens. One way of sanitizing that has been mentioned is irradiating the meat. Call me crazy but I don't want to even handle food that has been exposed to radioactive materials let alone feed it to my dog! The "official" reason is concern for animal and human health. They don't want to see food borne illnesses from raw meat. Unfortunately, they completely ignore the fact that people in multiple states were recently given salmonella poisoning from handling the KIBBLE they fed to their dogs! This whole raw policy came about after the Delta Society, a therapy dog organization, asked the AVMA what their stance on raw was. One of the people on the board of directors at the Delta Society also just happens to be the marketing director for Purina pet foods. The Delta Society instituted a ban on raw feeding, even popular raw treats such as freeze-dried liver treats, and lost many therapy dog teams as owners refused to stop feeding raw. After the ban, all Delta Society gear started sporting the Purina logo. Purina Pet Foods is the Premiere Sponsor of the Delta Society. I'm sure AVMA Platinum Partner Hills (a.k.a. Science Diet) is extremely happy about this new raw policy. What is a Platinum Partner? It is a company that gives $1,5 million to the AVMA over the course of 4 years in exchange for "benefits." I find it sad that me, a person with no vet training, has more knowledge on how to feed my dog than the average vet. How is this possible? I have been researching canine nutrition for 4 years. The average vet student takes 1 or 2 semesters on nutrition with one of those semesters being a general nutrition course covering both companion animals and livestock. And in some vet schools, the course material for how to feed dogs ans cats comes straight from kibble manufacturers. I've only had 1 vet in over 5 years, Chance's and our favorite vet Dr. Smith, who has made a good recommendation for dog food! I know I haven't posted month 4 of Chance's raw feeding journal but I am working on it. The 17-day Montana trip followed by family that stayed with us for 12 days has put me behind.
It won't be complete because some of the bone amounts didn't get written down and I have to find the trip journal where I wrote down what we were feeding Chance while we were gone. Last week I picked up my 2nd raw co-op order. I had ordered 10 lbs. of lamb kidney and 10 lbs. of lamb heart. I got the lamb kidney but the farmer ran out of heart before I could get my order in. There were limited amounts of organs. This is from the same place as the lamb liver I got for my 1st order. Still grass fed-and-finished, meant for human consumption and cheap. I saw lamb from the same farmer for sale at some local farm stands for a LOT of money! I also just placed my 3rd order. 1 60-lb. case of elk trim & 1 60-lb. case of venison trim. It's more expensive than I would normally pay for a co-op order but half the price of anywhere else for venison or elk! It's grass fed-and-finished and slaughtered form human consumption. It's about what I pay for beef though so not bad! 120 lbs. of meat means we need a 2nd freezer! If we'd gone with the 19.7 cu. ft. freezer instead of the 14.8 cu. ft. freezer we wouldn't need another one. We are going to get just a 5 cu. ft. freezer. It will fit just fine by the current freezer and still leave room to park in the garage and if it is not in use, we can unplug it. It also means that we can use it to store some stuff for us when it isn't full of Chance's food! Our 17-day, 16-night Montana trip has come and gone. Turns out we didn't need to haul all that food with us. The closest grocery store to where we stayed (30 minute-drive) had unenhanced whole chicken! Have never seen that there plus they had pork for the 1st time since we've shopped there. Hopefully this will hold true for next year! With the new Jeep trunk/bed platform the hubby made to accommodate the big 5-day cooler, we wouldn't need the cargo container on the roof to haul all of our stuff out!
We ended up taking chicken breasts, chicken thighs, chicken backs, boneless pork, beef and salmon in 2 coolers. The big cooler held most of the food. The small cooler held the food Chance would need on the way out and then the way home. We were going to just take chicken and a little salmon but then decided to feed pork and beef on days we didn't travel. We fed the pork with the backs and the beef with the thighs. It was so much nicer to be able to feed Chance raw instead of trying to add enough stuff to dog food to entice her to eat on the road. And her poop was perfect the entire time! 1st time ever on the road that this has happened. |
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June 2022
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