We've been feeding raw now a couple months. Had gone back to kibble for a month or so while a rescue dog got settled in, and had fed raw a few months before that time. It's going well.

Here is my question. My options for edible bones has been chicken backs and turkey necks. Also chicken parts but those come in a pretty balanced bone/meat ratio already. I am wanting something different that is not chicken or turkey. Something bone on its own like a chicken back that can be mixed half and half with pure meat, or another meat that has more bone, such as chicken parts.

One of my reasons for going raw was variety and I find myself having to feed chicken or turkey every day to get the bone into his diet.

I'm feeding a 110 lb Rottweiler.

I thought about a grinder, but reading suggested I would also need a bone crusher first and that's a commercial item. Any suggestions? To add to the fun, it has become impossible to get chicken backs here anymore so I have to drive about 90 minutes to get to a butcher who will order them in, at over $1 pound.

Rabbit quarters, if you could get them, or fish heads perhaps? I was thinking also of smaller grazers like lambs and goats, the ribs on them should be very digestible.

Downside: availability. The only thing that cheaper to raise than poultry is farmed fish.

I will check into those options. I don't feed raw fish and I tend to not feed him anything I wouldn't eat myself , i.e. Farmed fish

I did find an emu farmer and got some older freezer meat but he refuses to eat it raw. He is thinking about selling bone carcasses when he butchers but not sure if he'll chew the bones since he won't eat the meat.

Duck necks are pretty easy to find (at least in my area) and they are cheap.

For a big dog, pork neck bones, riblets, rib tips would be completely edible too (also cheap). Lamb breast (also called "flap") is soft bone (but not that cheap).

But I would not worry overmuch about variety in the RMBs, honestly. If you can rotate 2-3 different RMB proteins, and 2-3 different muscle meats, you're doing as well or better than most raw feeders.

For my pack, the list of meats is pretty fixed: chicken, turkey, duck, pork, beef, sardines. Because anything more exotic than that is more than I'm willing to pay for dog food. Lamb, mutton, goat, rabbit, bison, (and more) are all out there (and I look at them wistfully at the store), but I'm just not willing to pay five dollars a pound and up for it.

Instead, I focus on abundant variety in the plant-based foods that make up about 10% by weight of my dogs' diets. Sweet potato, brown rice, various greens, lentils, apples, cranberries--every batch of food I make up has a different side dish of nutrient-dense veg.

Also, don't forget that eggs and yogurt are proteins, so they also provide an opportunity for variety. And while I wouldn't want anybody to do it as a full-time substitution for bone, eggshells can be treated as a "bone substitute" in a raw diet. One half teaspoon ground eggshell per pound of boneless food fed could be counted as enough "bone" to balance about a pound of muscle meat.

Huge ditto to Tracy.

In fact, I long ago accepted that chicken (or rabbit if I had to switch) is my RMB. Two of mine are small, so even the larger poultry is less desirable for us.

But I do introduce plenty of variety in the muscle-meat part:
Lamb flaps (hard to find but cheap) sometimes (in small amounts ... it's fatty), yogurt, low-sodium cottage cheese, fish scraps (after filleting), occasional buffalo from scraps at the farmers' market, fairly frequent beef, beef heart (muscle meat) introduced slowly because it's rich, and more. I have even been known to add a can (NOT KIBBLE) of duck dogfood for the variety, and certainly green tripe when I can get it.

Sardines can be found for not much more than a dollar for water-packed unsalted (Trader Joe's) for a nice bone-in addition.


Basically, though, I think that many raw feeders (probably most) rely on poultry for the RMBs and provide the variety in the rest of the bowl.

BTW, even a small amount of a very different meat still provides a new amino acid profile. :-) It doesn't have to be the whole "rest of the bowl."




PS
Don't use up all the exotic meats! If you ever need a novel protein (meaning one this dog has never eaten), you don't want to have already used such items as as emu or ostrich, rendering them useless in an elimination diet.

Off the top of my head…..I feed as RMBs …chicken backs, necks, turkey necks, duck necks, some pork necks. Also chicken leg Qtrs, sometimes as the better part of a meal. Muscle meats are turkey, beef, pork, some goat, lamb & buffalo. Also beef heart, chicken hearts & gizzards.

Also eggs, green tripe, sardines (trader joe’s like Connie), & occasional mackerel (canned well rinsed) & salmon (trader jos’s no salt canned). And a variation of many veggies. Yougert & low salt cottage cheese.

Variety is always the best….but having a steady list a few daily items ( I use duck necks, chicken backs , turkey & either beef or pork or (eggs 2 x a week) with the other varieties regularly rotated in several times a week some a few times a month, is fine.

Other daily is yougert or occasionally cottage cheese, tripe, veggies, organ meat. I don’t feed any grains.

Wow, thank you everyone!

The person who got me started on raw does not feed pork so I haven't. Another meat and bone source would be nice but I hesitate. How did you get to the place to feel comfortable?

Also is there a reason you shouldn't feed more than 2 eggs a week?

There's really no reason not to feed pork. Well, unless your dog is an observant Jew.

But seriously, time was (decades ago) that raw pork could potentially be contaminated with Trichinella. But it is all but nonexistent today in the U.S. Most of the handful of trichinosis cases that occur in this country are from people eating things like bears or big cats.

Pork is a fine dog food, and there are some good "soft" bones like "neckbones" and ribs that are RMB for big dogs. Pork shoulder, pork butt, and "picnic" cuts are also very cheap sources of muscle meat--as are pork heart.

As for eggs: The issue with eggs is a raw-vs.-cooked thing. It's more complicated chemistry than I understand (or you probably want to know)--but you can google "avidin-biotin-binding" if you want to read about it. It has to do with a B vitamin. And the fact that raw egg white will bind with this B vitamin in the body and potentially cause a vitamin deficiency if the dog ate a whole lot of them all the time. But if you cook the egg white, it changes the chemistry, and there's no problem.

So--if you feed raw eggs, limit them. If you feed eggs cooked until the whites are hard, then you can feed them without limit. Cooked eggs can be treated as you would muscle meat in the diet. (I keep a flock of laying hens, so my dogs eat a lot of scrambled eggs. But even if you are buying eggs at the store, they are a relatively cheap source of protein.)

 Quote: Tracy Collins

.... if you cook the egg white, it changes the chemistry, and there's no problem.

So--if you feed raw eggs, limit them. If you feed eggs cooked until the whites are hard, then you can feed them without limit. Cooked eggs can be treated as you would muscle meat in the diet. (I keep a flock of laying hens, so my dogs eat a lot of scrambled eggs. But even if you are buying eggs at the store, they are a relatively cheap source of protein.)

Absolutely!

I give cooked eggs pretty often too (treating them as part of the muscle meat, as Tracy says). (I dispose of some of the yolks if the RMBs are fatty.)

http://leerburg.com/webboard/thread.php?topic_id=31648&page=1#352898

Well then pork is on the menu. My husband is a paramedic and saw a case of trichinosis years ago. Bad.

I fed a raw egg most days at different times. 5 or 6 days in a row. I'll limit that or cook them.