The Nitty Gritty: Content and clarity

Edited for Clarity:
I really wanted to first clarify that I said in the last post on this topic that we don't do a lot of veggies. We've increased the variety of organ meat that we use, and decreased the amount of veggies. However, we've also increased the amount of green tripe that they get. Tripe is just the contents and lining of the stomach of ruminants, like cattle. Lots of mid-digestion grass and all the good digestive assisting qualities that the fermentation process adds. This is not the same as tripe that you find in the grocery store, which has been washed and bleached, and essentially stripped of most of its beneficial qualities. And this also makes it harder to find. But if you find it, you're lucky. It smells like shit, literally, but it's good for them, and they love it.

This is a boneless meal of cut up chicken thighs, perhaps
some liver that I see in there, canned pumpkin, and kelp.

How much?

The rule of thumb-- and this was pretty standard across resources-- was to begin by feeding 2-3% of their ideal body weight per day, for an adult dog, and then adjust as needed. We just watched for weight gain and loss and went from there. We started River off at 2%, but she's older and less active; she now eats more like 1.5%. Luna, on the other hand, has a metabolism I'd ill for. When she is very active, she eats 4% or more. Because she stays very lean, and has a very short coat, it's easy to see when she's losing and gaining. So although River weighs the most, she eats the least. It all depends on the dog.

The RMBs

As I mentioned, we felt comfortable with the 10/10/80 formula. But how to achieve that? Oh, just do ~60% RMBs and you're good, right?

...But what counts as an RMB? And aren't some bonier than others? And are you sure they can eat bones? And what kind of bones?

See? Overwhelming.

Through the Yahoo raw feeders' group, I found out about this website. The USDA has a database that you can use to determine the percentage of bone in the RMBs that you feed. To find that information, you'll find your cut, and then click on the "full report" link. You'll see a percentage listed as "refuse" and a description of what that "refuse" is (ie, bone).

It seems that most people feed chicken RMBs, at least to start with. Some also feed rib bones, necks bones-- other non-weight bearing bones of larger animals. Chicken bones are all pretty soft. But the weight bearing bones of large livestock are too hard and dense for most dogs to be edible. They can still be used as recreational bones, but they certainly weren't going to go through my consumer model grinder. Chicken and rabbit will go through a mid-range home grinder well, depending on the model, and they are easy for the dogs to crunch and to digest.

Chicken leg quarters are a favorite starter, and they are listed as 27% bone on the USDA site. This isn't a foolproof number, so don't get bogged down by that. But by making them approximately half of the dogs' meals, we're giving them a roughly 13% bone content. This is technically a bit high, but I just watched their stool for signs of white, too-dry stool or mild constipation. The leg quarters we were using were pretty meaty, so they may have been less bony than the USDA would suggest.

So depending on what RMB you choose, you can visit the USDA site, find it's % and do a little algebra to find out how much you need per day.

The heart and tongue are muscles; the kidney and
sweetbreads are secreting organs. Kidneys have a good
deal of fat around and inside them. The fat on the outside
is what's known as suet. 

Muscle or Organ??

Which one is it?? The heart is an organ right? Not when you're talking about raw feeding. It's a muscle-- a rich muscle, and one that you'll want to ease most dogs into (though mine can eat whole meals of heart now), but it's a muscle. Gizzards-- muscle. Tongue-- muscle. Lung-- eh. Kinda both? It's best if you can find a secreting organ to make up the organ portion of the meals. Don't get me wrong; all the things listed above are great for variety, and certainly better than nothing in my opinion. But ideally, you want things like kidney, sweetbreads (thymus), spleen, liver, etc. Secreting organs.

The Rest

For the boneless portion, we fed as wide a variety as possible. At first, this was what we could get at the store, and on sale. Pork (I freeze pork for 2-3 weeks to be on the safe side), loins, sirloins, center cuts, picnic roasts, all mostly on sale; whole cuts of beef from the grocery store (roasts, steaks, etc.) and ground beef from our local abattoir where I had a better idea of the quality and age of the meat; and other cuts of chicken like boneless thighs, breasts, tenders, gizzards and hearts; turkey breasts. Eventually we added beef and pork hearts and tongues and trim from butchers.

For the organ portion, we began with liver (beef and chicken) and some eggs. We were eventually able to start adding kidneys, sweetbreads, along with the liver, spleen, pancreas, etc.

Because liver deals with nutrients that are delicately balanced and that are important not to get in too high quantities (like zinc and copper), my understanding is that liver should be kept at roughly half of the organ allotment (ie, 5%). We have done this by giving it daily with other organs or by alternating days and weeks.

As for the fish, because we were feeding whole body fish, bones included, we did not supplement these days with organ or extra calcium. And because we added cottage cheese, veggies, and eggs to those meals, even though they had bones I didn't really worry about throwing my numbers off.

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This has changed over the years because of a change in our supplier, but it's a way to get started with what you can find at the grocery store without it costing a fortune.