Zoey Bone In Meal

 Tonight was bone in meal for Zoey.  It is a cornish hen spine.  She loves to chomp on bones and it's healthy for her teeth.  She gets a boney meal twice a week. 

Munchie Bone In

 So tonight was bone in night.  Munchie still isn't too enthused about eating boney pieces which really shocks me as he digs chicken bones out of the garbage can and eats the nobbys off the end of the bones.  He would take a bite into the chicken, feel the bone in his mouth and quit.  So I had to resort rto smashing the bones up in my Ninja.  He still wouldn't eat it so I had to mix maybe a teaspooon of canned food in with it to get him to eat it all..  Here are some pictures of him biting into the piece. 

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Zoey's Mix

So little Miss Zoey (4# chihuahua) is extremely picky when it comes to organs.  So I make her up a mixture of everything she needs for a balanced diet.  I still give her boney meals a couple times a week alternating between rabbit, cornish hens and whole prey mice.  The she gets either chicken, pork, beef, turkey, fish, duck for her other meals that are made into little ice cube shaped cubes.   Zoey loves these little cubes and what she doesn't know is that she eats the organs without problems......won't hurt her :-)  Here is my 'recipe' that I use for her:
14oz meat (beef, chicken, pork, turkey, duck, fish)
4oz beef heart or chicken or rabbit hearts whatever I can find
or 1# Meat
1 oz Liver I use beef or chicken liver.
1 oz Other Secreting Organ kidney, spleen, thymus, pancreas, lung, testicles, or brains.  I mostly used Beef Kidneys as that is what was readily availabe.  I am running low on it so I am going to have to go hunt down some other organs.
1 sardine
1/2 teaspoon ground egg shell
1 raw egg
1 fish oil capsule (1000mg)
2 & 1/2 Vit E (400IU) Capsules
2 oz Vegetables/Blue Berries (I use these as antioxidants for Zoey since she has so many health issues).  I mainly use pumpkin, spinach, broccoli.  Notice if you feed Prey Model Raw, the veggies are usually omitted.  But after research I decided to include this small amount as she needs the antioxidant properties of them. 

Here is her meat thawing

 I put everything into the Ninja and chop/mix it up.

Here it is portioned out in the cubes.  After they are flash frozen, I put them into snack bags and then into a gallon sized ziplocked labeled with what meat it is. 

They are a little more than 1oz per cube, Zoey gets 1 cube twice a day.

Griffin Update

Griffin in 11 weeks old now, and eating raw like a champ (well ground it is), he'll be starting to get some regular cornish hens in the next week, and hoping to add organs soon too.  He gobbles it right up, which is awesome because he wasn't a good eater on kibble (although who can blame him?)  His health is greatly improved as he was dealing with a chronic respiratory from the time he was born (he was LITERALLY on antibiotics up until he was about 7 weeks old, when I got a hold of him and got him on natural remedies.  He has been keeping my husband company while he's been out of work recovering from surgery on his elbow and then surgery 2 weeks later on his shoulder.   Griffin is doing awesome, I love how easy it has been to transition the 2 puppies (Ziva (RIP) and Griffin to raw, I don't think Griffin has even had a soft stool yet.  YAY RAW!  

How I feed my little dogs:

Lately I've been asked a few times what I feed my little dogs, so here's how I feed my 2 little guys.
I feed mine mostly chicken bones/cornish hen bones for their bone in portions.  My dogs only require bone 2 meals a week, sometimes 3 depending on what I feed.  The rest are boneless in which I use the beef, pork, ground hamburger, turkey & chicken as well.  I also feed 1-2 meals of fish (smelt, mackeral, salmon).   For the beef/pork I generally buy either steaks or roasts on reduced for quick sale, or I will buy pork chops as well, cutting out the bones if they have them (because they are cut, they are too sharp).  I also have started giving them beef hearts (that's something you have to work them up to as it's rich)   I also sometimes throw in a raw egg, shell & all.  When I give organs I feed a boney meal with it, that helps with any loose stools from organs.  A lot of people feed chicken backs/thighs for their boney portions.  I do also give whole prey a few times a week (mice with fur & all).  I give them pork neck bones, turkey necks, beef ribs, pork ribs for bones they can gnaw on.  They don't eat much of the bones of those but they do eat/tear/rip the meat off which is a great workout for them.  

Here is how I started:

1st 2 weeks:  Boney Meals (except Zoey who only got them for the first 4 days then we went to twice a week).  I used Cornish Game Hens, Thighs for a pomeranian I had.

3rd week: Started adding a little bit of pork in addition to the boney meals, increasing the pork amount daily until they were getting a whole meal of pork

4th week: Started adding a little bit of beef in addition to the boney meals, increasing the beef amount daily until they were getting a whole meal of beef

5th week: I added organs to the boney portions again increasing the amounts each day.

Video of Ziva Eating Raw

Ziva's noon feeding

New Little Carnivore Joins our Family!

We have a new "Little Carnivore", her name is Ziva and she is a Miniature Pinscher Puppy.  She is taking to raw like a pro and already eating through Cornish hen bones, and she doesn't even have any adult teeth yet :-)  She is getting 10% of her weight per day (as she's a puppy) so we are feeding her about 5.6oz per day divided into 4 feedings:

Here are some pictures of her 1st Raw Meal:

Say Cheese!

Look at how good she is starting to look!  I'm so pleased!

Working her cornish hen leg around

As you can see, Zoey's rash is going away, she's looking great!

Georgie eating some Cornish Hen Ribs, love his expressions!

Georgie investigates his 2nd Beef Kidney piece...he gobbled it up in an instant!  So far they both LOVE the organs I have given them!  YEAH!  That means easy to balance their diet!

July 26, 2010

Georgie enjoying some yummy goodness of chicken.

Zoey enjoying cornish game hen boney breast and pork

Zoey enjoying some chicken and boneless pork

Tackling

Today is the 3rd day with a little bit of pork in addition to their chicken/cornish hens, and BOTH of them absolutely love it, and neither one are having any problems with it.  YEAH!  I am just so happy with how well they are doing wiht Raw Feeding.

 

Zoey really amazes me how she tackles the food

Zoey Enjoying Cornish Hen Wing tip

Georgie really likes pork, he picks it out first

Shellie's 1st raw day

It took her a minute, but I think she likes it!

Shellie's first raw meal

Zoey deciding where to start

Zoey Working on some Cornish Hen (boney) piece

Georgie concentrating on the task at hand

Georgie enjoying Chicken Thigh

Decisions, Decisions...

Zoey takes her time to decide exactly how she is going to 'attack' her meals.  It's really fun to watch her decide how exactly to tackle them.  Georgie just grabs his meals and eats with gusto, which is quite the change from what he was doing when he was eating kibble.

Watching them eat

Well things continue to go great.  Today I was able to connect with another local rawbie and picked up some chicken quarters which turned out to be too small for her rotts n chows, and we talked for a bit, I learned so much from her!  Truly amazing!  Her chow was diagnosed with TSC (transitional cell sarcoma) of her bladder in 2008, she was sent home with some pain meds, and told that she wasn't going to live long, then she quit eating, and she did some research and started raw feeding, the dog is doing amazingly well!  She also has a rottie who was ocd/add after getting her rabies shot, and with raw and homeopathy, she's normal now (boy I can't wait to try feeding raw to Shellie, I really think it will benefit her).  It was just awesome to find a local connection and learn so much from her.  Thank-you so much Christy, I really appreciate it. 

I also have a new found fascination to watch my little carnivores eat, it is so cool to watch them decide which pick of meat they will tackle first and watch them maneuver it around in their mouths to get all the yummy goodness. 

I also discovered today that the Dollar Tree near us has a frozen food section, they have Chicken Livers and Chicken Thighs (3 for a $1) so that is something to keep in mind for the future, as I won't be needing chicken for quite some time :-)

Born to Eat Raw!

We are almost 10 days feeding raw now, they are both doing really well, no soft stools or anything, they are tolerating chicken/cornish hens without any problems, starting next week we might start introducing different proteins such as pork/beef etc.  Then in a few more weeks we will start with organs.  I am just so happy with how they are doing.  Someone on dogster mentioned that Zoey is doing so well because she was 'born to be fed raw', and I couldn't agree more!  As you can see from the pictures, they absolutely are LOVING it!  Zoey has always eaten with gusto, however Georgie was getting a little finicky when I switched her from Wellness Core to Blue Wilderness....good thing Shellies not picky as I have a 12# bag to go through :-)  I think that helped me make the decision to switch to raw as Georgie getting finicky about eating.

I also joined a local (utah) raw feeding group and in searching the archives, found a couple of local sources near me!  WAHOO!  I'm so excited, one makes ground meats (lamb, beef, mixed--> deer, elk, bison etc) in rolls, and another processes rabbits either ground or whole for raw feeders....awesome.  Here are the links for anyone who's interested:

http://www.rawdietusa.com/
http://cachevalleyproducts.com/

Cornish HEns

Zoey and Georgie are doing great, Georgie is having no problems, Zoey hasn't gone poop for 48 hours now, I gave her some pumpkin tonight and will give her another boneless meal tomorrow morning.  I think she is going to only need boney meals maybe every other day.  We're still getting the hang of this.