Dog Food

[The Weazle]

With hunting seasons fast approaching, how many of you home butchers save your carcasses and cut them up to pressure cook to make home made dog food?

I save a fair bit of my carcasses and all trimmings and scraps not made into burger or sausage and pressure cook them at 15 pounds for 2-21/2 hours and divide up the meat and fat/marrow juice.  Then my wife takes one of the containers of meat and fat and all juices from pressure cooking, brings it to a boil and addds rice, sweet potato, and all the veggie scraps and trimmings to it.  One container of my pressure cooker surprise makes 6-7 Costco cottage cheese containers of finished dog food.

We have 4 dogs and we supplement the kibble with this, and they love it!!!  I will say I have a small chest freezer that we use just for dog food...it’s kind of ridiculous but the dogs love it, it doesn’t take much time, and all of the waste gets used, even table scraps!

[Stein]

Great idea, I have about 20 pounds if misc scraps I need to move out of the freezer.


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[The Weazle]

We use our chicken and turkey carcasses also, pretty much everything with meat and almost all veggie scraps, we always look it up if we are unsure if it’s good for dogs or not, but most are.  Carrot greens, spinach, kale, etc, we just chop them up and add them after the rice and sweet potato are cooked.

[runamuk]

Growing up one of the old Norwegian fishermen would pressure cook and can all of the fish carcasses for his dogs.  The got that and table leftovers and that was it.  Those dogs lived to be 17 and 19, big "scottish" collies.

When I raised sheep I kept most of the offal and a lot of bones for my dogs.  My current dogs eat lots of fresh veggie scraps from the garden.  I do feed either a grain free or rice based kibble for convience but in the past I have cooked for a dog or two.

[NOCK NOCK]

Yep I use every bit of left over meat/trimmings from kills, as well as multiple salvage animals. We grind and cook all meat, then add sweet potato and various veggies and some fruits. Also add a vitamin supplement to each feeding.
This batch was aprox. 250#

[yorketransport]

Your dogs eat better than my kids.

I tried making food for my dogs but weren't that crazy about it. They're both pretty picky though, one time I grabbed the wrong flavor of Acana and the dogs nearly went on a hunger strike. Apparently the Grasslands formula is not as good as the Appalachian Ranch flavor.

Then the dogs self supplement with plenty of fresh veggies that they steal from the two rabbits that live in the house. I constantly find carrots and kale on my couch after the dogs have stolen it from the bunnies. I'm not sure the rabbits ever actually get any.

[Stein]

Man, even our old lady picky dog comes hobbling over anytime she smells game meat.  Both will slobber all over any piece of game meat except the liver.  I don't throw away anything anymore, they don't care if it has hair on it, bloodshot, freezer burned, tons of fat, connective tissue or whatever.

I like the idea of making more of a complete meal type of food over what I have now which is 100 ziploc bags rolling around in the bottom of my freezer.

[Netminder01]

Yep I use every bit of left over meat/trimmings from kills, as well as multiple salvage animals. We grind and cook all meat, then add sweet potato and various veggies and some fruits. Also add a vitamin supplement to each feeding.
This batch was aprox. 250#

I love this!

When I moved my last dog to a raw diet - or mostly raw the difference in her coat and overall body was noticeable.

I've save the bones and of course give her meat but have not incorporated as much as I should or would like to...Do you have a recipe to share?

[NOCK NOCK]

This is our base recipe. Our Chocolate has severe allergies and can only eat certain things.  we usually add trimmings from other things too, chicken, steak, huckleberries when plentiful, etc.

10lbs ground meat(including liver)
16 Eggs, put egg and shell in blender and pulverize, then scramble (shell has nutritional value)
4 cups oats
8 cups canned green beans
6 cups canned peas
6 cups canned carrots
4 cups yams, fresh and cooked
3 cups pumpkin canned or fresh....cooked lightly
2 cups acorn squash, cooked lightly

mix it all up and package/freeze in cheapy Tupperware.

[Netminder01]

This is our base recipe. Our Chocolate has severe allergies and can only eat certain things.  we usually add trimmings from other things too, chicken, steak, huckleberries when plentiful, etc.

10lbs ground meat(including liver)
16 Eggs, put egg and shell in blender and pulverize, then scramble (shell has nutritional value)
4 cups oats
8 cups canned green beans
6 cups canned peas
6 cups canned carrots
4 cups yams, fresh and cooked
3 cups pumpkin canned or fresh....cooked lightly
2 cups acorn squash, cooked lightly

mix it all up and package/freeze in cheapy Tupperware.

Thanks - I'll try this on my next harvest (fingers crossed)!

Lucky dogs!!

[4fletch]

My pups really eat well too. When I use the game meat scraps up I wait till Safeway has beef on sale i feed that to them. I will not eat beef but the pups will  ha ha.

[runamuk]

When I have had chickens my dogs got an egg basically just squashed into their bowl. I do miss that. My sisters pugs eat raspberries off the bushes, they find eggs layed outside the coop and help themselves all the time.

[kevinlisa06]

All of our dogs eat 100% raw. Both of our Pugs and the American Bully and our American PitBull Terrier. Mainly because processed dog food is garbage, with companies using euthanized dogs as part of dog food now. We’ve been feeding 100% raw for 3.5 years now. They eat Elk Deer Beef and Chicken.
On a side note what grinders are you guys using?We need a new heavyweight grinder for bone.


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[jackelope]

All of our dogs eat 100% raw. Both of our Pugs and the American Bully and our American PitBull Terrier. Mainly because processed dog food is garbage, with companies using euthanized dogs as part of dog food now. We’ve been feeding 100% raw for 3.5 years now. They eat Elk Deer Beef and Chicken.
On a side note what grinders are you guys using?We need a new heavyweight grinder for bone.


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You should look into feeding rabbit meat.

[runamuk]

All of our dogs eat 100% raw. Both of our Pugs and the American Bully and our American PitBull Terrier. Mainly because processed dog food is garbage, with companies using euthanized dogs as part of dog food now. We’ve been feeding 100% raw for 3.5 years now. They eat Elk Deer Beef and Chicken.
On a side note what grinders are you guys using?We need a new heavyweight grinder for bone.


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You should look into feeding rabbit meat.

I would feed rabbit in a heartbeat my dogs love that stuff, but too expensive to buy and no room to raise.