Domestic rabbit would be great. As long as they are dead when you give them to your dog. The less "processing" the more nutritious they will be for the dogs, skinned would be the very most I would do. (if you think it will bother you, feed the dogs in the dark or in the barn, you stay in the house).
There are vital nutrients in the organ meats that dogs NEED to stay healthy. For instance: the liver has vitamins A, B, D and K, iron, and copper. And then there are kidneys, pancreas, and pituitary gland which all have great nutrients for dogs.
If you feed livers frozen or semi-frozen they are much easier to deal with because the "juice" stays in it.
Green tripe (empty 3rd or 4th stomach of ruminants) is another offal (feed it in the barn too) that dogs go nuts over and is extremely beneficial.

thanks for all the info- this is a real adventure in dining! A

 Quote: annette karnatz

I sure do not want to risk "bloat" etc. from commercial food again. Sorry, promise not to ask/pester so much on this anymore! Annette

I just want to note that while there is a general thought that raw fed dogs can't get bloat, I don't believe they are immune. We don't know enough about the triggers for bloat to make such an assumption. Feeding raw is tremendously better for your dog's health than kibble, in many, MANY ways, though active, large-breed dogs could still suffer bloat under the right circumstances. Feeding directly before or after heavy exercise should be avoided, no matter what you feed.

Someone please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - I feed raw and I'm STILL wary of bloat...

But back to the OP - way to go!! Oscar's first raw meal was a real rush for me - and I continue to enjoy just watching him eat now. My advice would be to find a proper butcher in your area - this can be hard, I know, as not every town has one. But a butcher will daily accumulate "scraps", as Jennifer mentioned, and things like chicken backs and necks are considered very low grade leftovers after breaking down birds into human cuts. My new butcher (we just moved and I now have access to one!! ) supplies me with "chicken parts for soup" - a mix of backs, rib cages, necks and sometimes wing and leg bits - at .69 a #. This provides all my rmbs. For muscle meat, I go back to the grocery store for any type that's on sale that week (the butcher's meat, even plain ground beef, is all pretty fancy and over priced) - I usually look for anything between .99 and 2.00 a #. Organ meat I'll source at both.

Sometimes I think the practice of FINDING and buying ECONOMICALLY all the ingredients of a raw diet is even more of an art form than the diet itself! I ran into a raw feeder here in Cambridge a few weeks ago (one of only 3 I've met yet) who bragged on and on about how fantastic it was to feed raw and all the fancy ingredients that went into his dog's diet... then he revealed that it cost $100 a WEEK!! Ouch... I suppose there's nothing wrong with that, if you can afford it, but for the REST of us, there are certainly less extravagant, and equally healthy options.

Cheers,
~Natalya

I'm lucky because I can get backs and necks from the supermarket at .59/lb. Just need to find a better price on muscle meat and organ meat. There's a butcher fairly close that I will check out this week; if not I may end up at Wal-Mart (which for me is a last resort)
PS regarding bloat, I will try to find the source that I read, but one study that I read said a couple of interesting things.

First was that elevating the dog's food actually increased the risk of bloat. Also, another thing that this study mentioned was that in dogs that had suffered bloat and torsion they found that many had an elongated ligament(this is probably not the correct term) that attached the stomach to the body cavity. This elongation allowed the stomach to twist. They surmised that, especially in older dogs, the elongation occured from eating large portions at a single meal, and over time the ligament stretched, allowing the stomach to twist when it bloated.
Seems much more likely that this would occur with kibble, where the kibble will be absorbing water and expanding and getting heavier in the stomach, than w/ raw...

That's really interesting Lynne! I'd love to read that study if it is accessible. None of what I've read has ever mentioned an expansion of ligaments like that... you learn something new everyday!

~Natalya

Natalya, here's the study summary. Glad to hear that Oscar's root canal went well!
http://www.vin.com/proceedings/Proceedings.plx?CID=TUFTSBG2003&PID=5091&O=Generic

Thanks!! Now that's interesting. There was a lot covered in that study - some good stuff. Guess I'll strike my "no exercise after eating" comment - as they roundly dismissed that!

Just when I think I should stop devoting so much time to reading up on stuff like this, I realize how much there is out there I haven't seen!

Cheers,
~Natalya

I've often wished I could exercise my dog after a meal. His energy is off the charts after he eats. But....BUT....Bloat is one of the few things that scare me to death. I've read of dogs who survive bloat but my personal experience was every dog who had it died.

My friends GSD died from bloat suddenly, he had a drink from a stream after running around and 2 hours later he was dead they could not save him and believe me it is a painful way too go. The vet told my friend it was probably the long drink and bouncing around afterward. This was an interesting section I found in the article Lynne posted. " There was no correlation of bloat risk to exercise before or after eating, as most dogs bloated in the middle of the night with an empty, gas-filled stomach. There was also no correlation to vaccinations, to the brand of dog food consumed, or to the timing or volume of water intake before or after eating."
I don't know what to believe now, I had always been told to feed and give water after you dog has cooled down from activity and not to feed or water before exercise?

I think that sometimes statistics can be misleading, and you should do what you're most comfortable with. That article was interesting and I think it dispelled some common misconceptions about bloat,(like that you should elevate your dog's food)
but just because it's statistically unlikely to happen that a dog would experience bloat due to exercising after a meal doens't mean that it can't happen...