[chili]

Since a chicken leg or thigh is to much food at one time for the little chis. Are we stuck with just feeding wing parts with maybe alittle extra meat thrown in? How to you handle it? How do you balance the feeding when the amount is so small?

 

[Deerboy's Momma]

Dedicated to proper carnivore nutrition - Prey Model Raw Feeding for Dogs & Cats

That's the site I used when I was first starting out.

Please know that the more variety, the better- just chicken isn't the ideal diet. Chip gets 3 oz. a day (3% of his ideal weight), which is about half a drumstick. I take a heavy knife (like a cleaver) and just cut through right about half of it. The bottom part (the part that's pretty much just bone + skin), I put into a separate baggy. I have a scale that goes to ounces, and that's what I use.

Don't stress out too much about getting the ratio right- it'll take a few months for your dog to totally detox from kibble, and until then you really just need to watch the poop. Too hard/constipated, cut back on bone. Too loose/diarrhea, add in more bone.

I recommend chicken wings, necks, or drummies- Chip eats drummies.

Any other questions? Now that I'm at a point where I know what I'm talking about, I love answering questions

Edit- To give an example of what I meant by variety, Chip is about six weeks into it and eats chicken, turkey, pork, and fish (alternating). Soon I'll add in beef heart, and then various animal sources of liver. Eventually, once he's completely detoxed from kibble (another two months, probably), I plan to add in goat, lamb, venison, bison, and duck. Dogs needs red meat- poultry isn't considered red meat, so a diet of just poultry- such as chicken- will lack some nutrients.

 

[Zippy]

One chicken drumstick makes for about three meals for Zippy. I use the kitchen shears to cut through the bone and put the rest into a ziplock in the refrigerator. His favorite part of the leg is the very top or bottom joint that is covered with cartilage and full of blood filled bone marrow. About half of his meals are chicken, the other half are another kind of meat (usually beef or lamb). I often give about 1/3 of a chicken neck with his alternate protein so that there is some bone content in the majority of his meals.

 

[Brodysmom]

Everyone does it a little differently. I like to use cornish hens because I can get the ones that are 16 ounces so whacking it up into about 8 chunks of bone/skin/meat is 2 ounces each. That chunk is a meal and satisfies the bone requirement for several meals since bone is only 10% of the diet. So I would feed a cornish hen chunk, then a couple meals of boneless beef, pork, fish, bison, venison (whatever meat I have) and then add in another chunk of the cornish hen. Repeat. Easy. I do organs on the weekend, but Brody is an experienced raw fed dog so he handles most everything I throw at him. Most dogs need to go VERY easy on organs as well as eggs. I will feed a bony meal before and after his organ meal and that keeps his stools consistent.