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. |
AuthorAdventures In Raw Feeding: my woman's blog! Archives
June 2022
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