Bok bok bok! (A Raw Update)

I think I'm overdue for a raw update.  Raw feeding has been going swimmingly, and I finally feel confident about my ability to judge portions and meat/bone/organ ratios.  This is probably in large part due to the fact that I've finally found a source of organ meat.  Since picky Mona won't each the super-cheap and widely available chicken liver, I'd been struggling to find beef liver.  I went the first couple months with only meat and bone before I found some beef liver (albeit more costly than I wanted).  I made do with this for a couple more months, but I knew I needed to fill the other half of alloted 10% organ with something that was NOT liver.  Thankfully, a friend turned me on to My Pet Carnivore.  Their prices were reasonable, and I was able to split the order with another raw feeding friend (err, my only raw feeding friend!) which made the delivery fee a non-issue.  I'm thoroughly please with my purchase, and I now have enough organ meat (spleen, kidney, pancreas, and beef liver too!) to las be SEVERAL months.  Success!

While my main reason for ordering from MPC was for the elusive organ meat, I also bought a few "extras" just for variety's--and curiosity's--sakes.  :)  I got one bag each of chicken heads, chicken feet, and turkey feet.  While I'm not completely new to such body parts (I'll have to share our squirrel experience in the next post), seeing whole chicken heads was a new experience for me.

In the bag, they were obviously chicken heads, but being stuck together made them seem more like one hunk of meat.  However...

When you take them out, the reality that they were at once a living, breathing bird becomes a little too real.  Um, ew?!  Thankfully I'm not super squeamish, but they're still kind of gross, to say the least.  But they're food for my dog, and if I'm going to feed a raw diet, I know I need to accept ALL parts of that diet.  So bring on the chicken heads!

Turns out, Mona LOVES them.  I gave her one this evening as an after-dinner treat, fully expecting her to take a while before she figured it out.  But in true carnivore style, she had that thing chomped up in a few quick crunches, and the entire head was gone in less than 3 minutes!  She absolutely loved it.  It appears chicken heads are the doggy equivalent of candy.  :)  I'm thrilled to see her trying new things so readily, and the fact that she loves them is even better.  I'm also thoroughly pleased with my organ haul, and will definitely order from MPC again.  They were very nice and made it easy to organize a delivery.  If anyone was waiting on a recommendation before ordering from them, here's mine!

I'll have to share our adventures with the chicken feet and turkey feet in the future.  Hopefully they take Mona a little longer than the chicken heads.  At the very least, I expect the turkey leg (which is almost as long as she is) to last a little while!

A lesson in the importance of bone.

I learned a valuable lesson this week in the importance of bone-in meals.  Mona's main source of bone is chicken.  Specifically, leg quarter pieces that she eats about 3 days a week.  We were low on chicken but had lots of venison and pork, and since I was pretty busy this week I kept putting off buying more chicken.  This meant she ate a lot of venison and pork, probably 4 or 5 days straight.  So, Sunday she woke up at 4am (and again at 8am) with watery stools.  Immediately realizing my mistake, I gave her a bone-in chicken thigh that afternoon.  I'm not sure how long it takes for the bone to "kick in", but the watery mess continued ALL. DAY. LONG.  She was asking to go outside constantly, and even had an accident that evening.  I like to think that, since she couldn't hold it, she at least knew to aim for the linoleum and not the carpet.  :)  Again this morning, she woke up at 3am again at 6, with no improvement.  

Mona will eat another bony chicken meal today, probably tomorrow too, and hopefully that will help get us back on track.  And I will never again slack on buying chicken if it is time for a bony meal!!

Mona's first meal away from home

This weekend my husband and I took a trip up to Michigan to visit my mother's family.  This is the first time we've had to worry about having someone else feed her.  We would be gone two full days, so my in-laws kept Mona and fed her two meals.  I should point out that I am thrilled to have someone as willing to take care of her as they are.  It's a real blessing.  They are crazy about Mona, and were more than happy to take care of her while we were gone.  However, they don't understand the raw diet at all, and I can tell they don't trust we're doing the right thing.

I decided the easiest meals would be some bone-in chicken, so I sent a thigh and a split breast half, each 10 ounces.  Around 2 o'clock on Sunday we got a call from my mother-in-law.  She was concerned that Mona was covering her food with a towel.  I explained that Mona buries her food when she isn't hungry, and that it was NOT a big deal.  I told her to just stick it back in the fridge and try again that evening.  We didn't hear back, so I assumed all went well.

When we picked her up tonight, I discovered that on Sunday night, concerned about Mona not eating, my mother-in-law took a butcher knife to the chicken thigh and hacked it into pieces!!  Thankfully, Mona ate the chopped pieces without incident... She is a gulper, and it's a miracle she didn't choke on anything.  Today's meal was eaten whole without a fuss, thank goodness.

Where I'm going with this is, when you leave your raw fed dog with people unfamiliar with raw feeding, don't be afraid to leave specific, detailed instructions.  I had let my husband to communicate with his parents about how to feed Mona her chicken, but his instructions were obviously quite vague and inadequate. To someone who knows the basics of raw, even if they don't feed raw themselves, instructions like "throw the chicken on the towel and she'll eat it" might be enough.  But when leaving your dog with someone with absolutely no understanding of raw, I'd like to make a few suggestions:

• Explain the importance of letting eat their meal whole.  I'm sure my husband explained that she could eat the chicken whole, but I doubt he explained WHY.  In the future, I will be sure to explain that cutting up the chicken would result in a dangerous choking hazard--both from sharp, cut bone edges and swallowable-sized chunks.
• Explain that it is perfectly okay if your dog doesn't eat.  My husband's family loves to eat.  Even their cat can't say no to a treat (and their cat gets FAR too many treats... she is quite overweight).  I know they simply can't imagine a dog that can turn down food.  They are probably not familiar with the idea that an animal could self-regulate with food.
• Explain that leaving meat out is perfectly fine for a raw fed dog.  My mother-in-law mentioned that she didn't want to leave the chicken out and make Mona sick.  I should have explained that the rules of raw meat humans are used to don't apply to dogs.  I have left raw meat out for over an hour, waiting for Mona to eat it.  And if she doesn't it is perfectly okay to put it back in the fridge and try again... Even several days later!
• Explain that raw fed dogs poop less!  My in-laws were also quite concerned that she didn't poop while she was over.  Of course, they are used to pets fed incredibly low-quality kibble that poop out almost as much as they consume.  I don't think they understand what a huge impact (proper) diet could have on a dog's digestive system.

Granted, everything went fine and Mona is great.  She is healthy and happy and has a full belly.  I suppose it doesn't really matter that I wasn't more thorough in explaining raw feeding.  But there were several errors that could have ended much less pleasantly, and I definitely don't plan to let those same errors happen again.  I keep thinking about how easily Mona could have choked on those cut chicken pieces!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sadly, I have no fantastic Thanksgiving meal story to share.

Mona thew up a little bit this morning.  I'm not quite sure why.  I was in the kitchen this morning making food for our dinner later on, when I heard that unmistakable retching sound.  She ended up vomiting three times, only small amounts and nothing but foamy yellow bile.  I don't know if she was just hungry (did the smells coming from the kitchen make her hungry?), or if she was feeling a little under the weather.  Either way, she seemed just fine afterwards, and so after waiting about an hour to make sure she wouldn't throw up again, I went ahead and fed her her meal.

Today Mona had a 9 ounce piece of chicken leg quarter and some liver.  Nothing fancy.  I'd thought about getting something different for her, like a "pork picnic shoulder" I'd seen... Something to give her a really good workout.  But circumstances changed and that just didn't happen.  It'll come eventually.

Introducing: Liver!

Cue the Sad Trombone.  That sums up our first experience with liver.

Today's meal consisted of a drumstick, a couple gizzards, some extra skin, and her very first chicken liver.  I served it all up in a bowl, and she went straight for the skin the second I put the bowl down.  Next came the gizzards, then the drumstick.  Then she examined the bowl, still containing the liver, very closely.  She licked all around the bowl, even licked in the bowl, but would not touch the liver.  After a couple minutes of licking around it, she left it.  Over the course of half an hour, she kept going back to the liver, but would not eat it.  At one point, the cat even snuck up to it and enjoyed a little nibble, but even that didn't entice her to eat it!  After 30 minutes I gave up and put it back in the fridge.  We rested for about 45 minutes, then went to the dog park.

Back from the dog park, round two: The liver reappears.  I set it back out, and she did the same licking/circling/revisiting routine.  After probably another 20 minutes and no progress, I picked up the liver and tried to coax her to eat it.  After much hesitation, she eventually, ever so slowly, took the liver from my hand and ate it.  Ugh.  All that for a piece of liver no more than half an ounce!

Tomorrow I think I'll try a different approach.  I'll feed the liver first, and only serve her "main course" once the liver has been eaten.  Fingers crossed!

Otherwise, Mona's been doing great!  I've bumped up her meals from 8 ounces to about 10, and have been giving 3-4 ounce "snacks" if her meals are going to be particularly far apart.  She seems to be happy, and hasn't shown me any signs of being hungry at all.  All seems well to me!

Adding to meals.

Raw feeding is going great!  Mona's been eating 8 ounce meals approximately once a day, although sometimes those meals are more like 18 hours apart instead of 24.  I'm wondering though if it just isn't quite enough.  She seems to weigh the same as when we started last week (using the good old "hold your dog and stand on a scale" method), but she feels slightly thinner to me.  Which leads me to the easy way I've found to add an ounce or two to her meals...

Remember when I mentioned that my mom had snagged me a couple packages of chicken gizzards, hearts, and livers that were marked down?  I didn't know how to use them at first, since I couldn't keep an entire package in the fridge and use it up quickly enough, but I didn't want it frozen either.  So, I spread them out on cookie sheets and froze them all individually, so now I have bags with ready-to-go individual organs!  It's super easy to pull out one or two and thaw them in some warm water in just a few minutes.  The fat and skin didn't want to lay on the cookie sheet very well, so I came up with this:

An ice cube tray!  This worked perfectly.  Once they were frozen, I popped them out and bagged them up.  It's been very convenient.  For the last couple of meals I've fed an 8 ounce meat portion, plus a gizzard or two and some skin (roughly 2 ounces worth).  I also plan to use these as "snacks" on days when her regular meals will be a little farther apart.  A couple "cubes" of skin/fat, 3 or 4 gizzards, and a liver works out to about 4 ounces, so that seems like a good in-between meal.  We'll see how this works!

Let's talk about poop.

Now is when you squeamish folk should stop reading and go watch The Price is Right instead.

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Face it, if you're a raw feeder, or even thinking about it, poop is an inevitable subject.  I'm learning that, as a raw feeder, you become a veritable Poop Expert.  I've always given some thought to my pets' poop, as I do feel like it can tell you a lot about their health.  Nine times out of ten, Normal Poop = Healthy Pet.

Day Three.

Day number three!  Today it was two smaller drumsticks.  Mona is definitely getting the hang of it now.  She only licked it for a couple of minutes before she really started to tuck in.  It took her about 25 minutes to finish off both of them.  She tried twice to bring it up on the couch this time, though!  I'd like to give her at least a week, if not more, to get the hang of eating on a towel, but I suppose if she continues to bring things to the couch, we can switch to feeding her in her crate.

Day Two.

Today Mona had an 8 ounce chicken thigh.  It was pretty much the same routine as yesterday.  She spent the first 30 minutes making little progress--simply licking and nibbling at little pieces of the skin.  After that half hour mark, though, she got some good crunches in and had it finished off in 10 minutes.

Once again, she tried to bring it up onto the couch.  I set it back on her towel and she stayed there for the rest of the meal.  I think she might be getting the hang of this towel already!  I also had better luck with my camera tonight.

Notice that Mona is using the "no-hands" approach.  I'm interested to see if she becomes one of the prissy raw eaters that refuses to use her paws.  Personally, I'd love to see her get her paws dirty and grab on tight!

It has begun!

We have officially been raw feeders for one whole day!  For Mona's first meal, I started her off with a decent sized chicken drumstick, weighing right under 8 ounces.  She licked it for a while, moved it around a lot, had no idea what to do with it for quite a while.  After over half an hour, I finally started hearing some good crunching noises.  After that, she really got going, and had finished it off in about ten minutes. She's now sitting contentedly on our bench at the front window, watching passersby.

I served her meal in her old stainless steel bowl on top of an old bath towel.  She'd pulled the drumstick out of the bowl within the first minute, so I don't think I'll continue with that.  No point in dirtying up a bowl if the food won't even stay in it!  The towel, however, I'm hoping to keep.  She carried the chicken off the towel onto the carpet a couple of times (at one point, she even attempted to bring it up on the couch), but each time I picked it back up, set it back on the towel, saying "towel".  She's a smart girl, so hopefully she catches on pretty quickly.

Unfortunately, the battery on my camera doesn't want to hold a charge anymore.  I snapped one quick photo of the chicken in her bowl, after which my camera shut itself off and refused to come back on.  I'm going to attempt to charge it again tonight in hopes of getting raw eating pictures tomorrow!

I bought my first meat!

I took the plunge and bought my first actual raw food!  We're getting down to the last bit of kibble, so the switch is imminent.  Tonight I bought a 10 pound bag of chicken leg quarters--unenhanced, 75mg sodium.  I spent about an hour working on the contents of the bag and dividing it into meal-sized portions.

Let me preface by saying that the only meat I've ever worked with prior to tonight was the kind that has already been cut up and cleaned so that it's ready to throw in a skillet.  Chicken leg quarters are nothing like the nicely packaged boneless, skinless chicken breasts I'm used to!  Not only are the much messier, but they're much bigger than I was expecting.  Most weighed in at over a pound each!

I know that in the future, once Mona is able to handle all the extra skin and fat, preparation time will be much less.  But after much reading, I've decided to start her for the first two weeks with as little skin and fat as possible to avoid digestive upset.  So I spent well over an hour hacking away at these legs, first pulling off as much of the skin and fat as possible.  I cut each leg at the joint, and broke/cut it into drumstick and thigh pieces.  The thigh pieces were almost all a perfect 8 ounce portion.  Since the drumstick pieces were usually more like 5 or 6 ounces, I grabbed a couple frozen breasts from the freezer, cut them into thirds, and used those pieces to top off the bags.  All in all, my $6 bag of chicken leg quarters (plus a couple extra chicken breasts thrown in), I ended up with 19 bags in the freezer, each with 8 ounces of chicken leg.  I also saved all the fat and skin and stuck it in a bag as well... Surely there's a use for that?

On another note, I've enlisted my mother, Queen of Bargain Shopping, to help keep an eye out for good deals on clearanced meat.  Already, she snagged me a couple packages of chicken livers and gizzards for dirt cheap.  In a couple weeks, these livers and gizzards will be perfect to start adding to her chicken legs when I introduce organs to the diet.