Okay, the furries have been on raw meat/bones for a couple of months now, and I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything out.

Mon/Wed/Fri meals (twice daily) are 1/5 bones (lamb/pork ribs), 1/5 organ meat (liver, kidney or heart in rotation, from ox/pork/lamb) and 3/5 mince, usually tripe, sometimes chicken and occasionally rabbit.  All fed raw of course.  Tues/Thurs/weekends meals are 1/5 organ meats and 4/5 mince.

Does that sound okay?  The dogs seem happy enough, but I think I need to down the bone quota a bit - they've had knuckle bones twice this week, and some marrow bones to munch on (don't usually as the butcher doesn't normally get them), and I've just noticed that all 3 dogs have sore gums from them.  Which leads me to my mincer Q!

I'd like to feed chicken wings as a regular part of the diet, but Soli's the only one that really enjoys them - Opi takes forever, taking each wing to her cage and crunching it slowly.  Remy doesn't like them at all, and will take one wing into the front room, drop it on the floor and look pathetic :rolleyes: So, I'm thinking about getting a mincer for them, so I can feed them more often - prolly daily or every other day - so that I know the dogs are getting enough minerals and fats without hurting their mouths.  The question is, would a regular mincer cope with the bones or should I be looking at something more specialised?

When raw feeding heart is usually classed as muscle meat so you wouldn't include it in your offal allowance. Offal is usually fed at around 10-15% of total diet - I use liver predominantly and kidney as and when they are cheap to buy.

My dog seems to be best suited to between 20-30% raw meaty bones - with the emphasis on meaty - and I usually feed either breast of lamb with the bones in (this is different to lamb ribs which are far less meatier), sometimes chicken wings and fairly often the value chicken portions that Tesco sell which consist of legs, thighs and quarters in varying quantities. I also feed tinned pilchards as part of the bone content about once a week.

As I use AMP mince this has up to 5% bone content anyway so that is included in my calculations. Once or twice a week I feed a raw egg with the shell on as an extra or if the bone content has been low that week.

If you are able to source your foods from companies such as Landywoods you can save significant amounts of money - they don't deliver to our area sadly but with just the one dog it is not too much of a problem cost wise.

I have never minced bones up as Harely eats anything in it's natural state but, reading posts on various raw feeding sites, it woud appear that a normal household mincer won't put up with prolonged use on dog bones.

I tend to try and have as much species variety as I can and use beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, rabbit and fresh fish (live in a fishing town) - pork is usually restricted to liver and kidney purely because of the cost.

The best way of assessing if you have the bone ratio correct is by seeing what is coming out the other end You don't want crumbly white offerings as this means that the bone content is too high and you certainly don't want anything that will dent the ground when it hits it :D

Hope that helps a bit - it is quite daunting when you first start raw feeding and can take a while for you to feel confident with it :)

To be honest, I have difficulties with your way of describing the amount they eat of each kind of meat/bones.  1/5, 3/5?  Do you mean one out of five meals?   Maybe I'm a thicko:rolleyes:.  As Harley said, aim for about 30% meaty bones and 10% offal and some fish.  I find some beginners (me included) make the mistake to give too many bony stuff as we love to watch our dogs crunching away...it's fascinating isn't it? 

Sorry, edited to say, I can't give any advise on the mincer question.

You must have been too young to do fractions at school, before decimalisation :D 1/5 is one fifth or 20% :D

>You don't want crumbly white offerings as this means that the bone content is too high<

you know, I don't give my dogs raw bones as such, only bones they get is in the minced meat from tpms, yet thats exactly what their 'offerings' are like. The only time it alters to a 'softer' content is when offal/organ meat is eaten. It doesn't come out white of course, but left overnight its hard to tell the poo from the limestone :D :D

Or too old....I'm in my thirties.   First I thought the OP means one/fifth, but when it came to three/fifth, I thought surely not.  It's quite a complicated way of saying how much you feed of your dog.  Then on the other hand I was always useless at maths:rolleyes::rolleyes:

If you turn the 1/5, 3/5 etc to percentages it is easier to understand :) 1/5 is 20%, 3/5 is 60% and so on :)

Different bone content suits different dogs and it all depends on how meaty the RMB's are. If you are feeding about 20% RMB, and the bone content of that is in 50/50 proportion to meat then the actual amount of pure bone would be 10% of the total diet which is roughly about the amount that my own dog gets. However if you are feeding, say, stripped chicken carcasses then the meat to bone ratio could be as little as 20/80 which would make a higher proportion of pure bone in the diet.

That has probably made it as clear as mud :D :D

>That has probably made it as clear as mud<

:D :D  thats exactly what I was thinking :D

So I can add mind reading to my many talents :D :D :D

loL!  thank you for translating that Harley, I was a little fluff-brained when I wrote the post :D