Prey Model Raw

We scored a whole hog for free this week. Decided to feed it all in one sitting as a gorge meal. The dogs are all fat, happy and passed out.

Why feed a whole hog at once? Gorge meals are a normal thing for wolves, dogs. Their lives revolve around finding food. Either they find a carcass or they make a fresh meal but either way they eat as much as they can in one sitting because they have no idea when their next meal will come. Obviously our dogs at home know when their next meal is coming, and so do we. So, why do a gorge meals? For several reasons.

First, feeding a meal like this gives our dogs the opportunity to really get a mentally stimulating experience. It takes a lot more mental work for a dog to rip and tear meat off, crunch through bones of this kind of source. The enjoyment alone we watch from our dogs eating is reinforcing enough to do it again.

Second, it allows us to feed large meals to our big dogs. It saves us a lot of work with breaking down a whole hog, just let the dogs do the work!

Third, it may or may not provide any health benefits. There is no research, anecdotal or scientific, stating one way or the other. Many raw feeders do this and it works well for their dogs.

Gorging and fasting should not be attempted by the novice raw feeder. I highly suggest that only dogs who have been raw feeding for a few years do this. It takes some time and conditioning to get a dog’s system capable of handling such a large meal. This can be achieved by gradually increasing the size of a meal once every 2 weeks, and then increasing the space between the larger meal and their next meal. Puppies weaned to or switched to raw feeding early are better equipped to handle gorging and fasting sooner, but I don’t suggest doing it until the puppy is at least 6 months old, unless its a toy/small breed who may never be able to handle a true gorge/fast meal even as an adult. Toy or small breeds who are prone to hypoglycemia should never be fasted for long periods of time, so true gorge/fast meals may never be done with these dogs. Just proceed with caution and always supervise any feeding of any kind with a scrupulous eye!

Our dogs pictured below have been raw feeding for at least 2 years, the exceptions being two Great Dane puppies, 8 and 10 months old. All of them have been conditioned to gorge meals and handle them well!

Picture time….enjoy!

Pork liver and scrap meat

Turkey necks (an all time favorite at our house)

Beef hearts

Beef ribs; our recreation chew bone of choice, the girls love em!

We check back about once a day and package up any meat that’s already thawed and can be separated from the meat blocks. This can take up to 3 days for everything to completely thaw.

After everything has been thawed we’ll usually have a lot of “blood” left in the containers (mostly water). We will usually let the girls drink as much of it as they’d like. Good for the kidneys and liver. Get as much moisture in their diet as possible!

The meat ends up in 12 quart Sterlite containers we buy from WalMart, which hold 10-15 pounds of meat which lasts about 1-2 days at our house!

Turkey is an easy way to add a cheap alternative protein source to your feeding schedule. Hit up the after Thanksgiving sales and stock up! We’ve seen them as cheap at $0.25/lb after Thanksgiving.

The biggest problem is breaking down that whole turkey into smaller meals. We’ve put together a simple video demonstrating an easy method for breaking down a turkey in under 10 minutes.

We recommend having at least 1 VERY sharp knife to use for this. We prefer Shun knives. They ARE expensive but you’ll only need to sharpen them about once a year due to their high quality construction.
http://www.5vido.com/ShunKnives

One of the most popular comments we get when we explain we feed raw to our dogs is “that must cost you a LOT”.  If you’re resourceful and smart about how you feed raw it can be done MUCH cheaper than any quality kibble.  We pay, on average, about $0.60/pound for all of the meat we feed our dogs (and cats).  This include the more exotic meats like Elk, Deer, Anetlope, and other game meat.

If getting started on RAW, breaking down your cost of meat and freezer space is VERY important especially if you have big dogs or multiple dogs.
Here is our breakdown for our dogs (we don’t include the cost of the cat…she gets the scraps LOL)

Finding a freezer is easier than you think, free ones are posted on craigslist all the time so I would say that cost is neglegible.

Here is a guide for determining how much freezer space you will need:

28 cu. ft. of freezer space for ~500 lbs. of meat
14 cu. ft. of freezer space for ~250 lbs. of meat
7 c u. ft. of freezer space for ~125 lbs. of meat

We have an upright freezer that is about 24 cu. ft. and we routinely buy ~300# of meat at a time. We could fit much more considering we package our meat into containers that hold 2-3 days worth of meat.

300# of meat usually will last about a month and a half or two.

We have 4 dogs that weigh:

Shiloh: 65
Emmy: 65
Akasha (currently growing): 65
Bailey: 115

We buy meat that is on average (adding up all the costs of the different meats we buy and dividing by the # of meats) 60-75 cents per pound

Shiloh, Emmy and Akasha all cost us ~ $1 per day to feed

Bailey costs us ~$2 per day to feed

The meats we buy on a regular basis:

chicken backs, turkey necks, beef heart, pork ribs, pork roasts, whole tilapia, pollock fillets, lamb ribs, beef liver, chicken liver, beef kidneys, etc.

This breakdown does not include all the free meat that we have found to come in contact with (trust me its out there, ya just gotta know where and how to look for it

So, looking at the breakdown, is RAW worth it???