Everyone has their own way of feeding a raw diet, some do strictly "prey model", which is basically nothing but meat
and bones that are intact. Others feed nothing but ground meat and bones. Others feed ground meat and bones and add veggies
and some add fruit. Some add supplements, others do not. Some feed commercial frozen diets or a combo of commercial and homemade.
I am not going to give you a diet or tell you how you should feed. I feed a variety, some RMBs (raw meaty bones)
and I feed ground, sometimes with veggies, sometimes without. Sometimes I add salmon oil, sometimes I add sardines, some people
add mackeral, some feed whole fish. Some add eggs from time to time. The more you mix it up and give lots of variety, the
better it is supposed to be. The advantage to feeding ground is that you can add herbs, supplements, or whatever - that cannot
be done feeding strictly RMBs.
Basically, this page is to give you an idea of what it is like to grind your meat. I have gone through phases, at one
time feeding only necks and backs (with some organ meat in it) but am wondering if that is just too much bone. So I am once
again back to feeding entire chickens for maybe a better balanced more natural ratio of meat to bone. I also feed beef, venison,
and lamb. Some feed pork and turkey.
I started out years ago with a Villaware and a Maverick grinder. I was doing large quantities of venison (meat and organs/no
bone), and about 60 lbs of chicken at a time and I found that the motors would get hot, so I had to alternate grinders, letting
one cool down. I had large dogs then, and if you have large dogs you will find you will be grinding all the time or doing
large batches. We did enough for a month at a time.
http://www.pierceequipment.com/grinders.htmlI quit feeding raw for a while and sold those two grinders.
Then I started feeding raw again and purchased this grinder
I have since purchased a 1.5-HP Weston professional grinder. This will do semi-frozen chicken backs and necks
and not bat an eye, and will do turkey necks, wings and legs...but you can hear a change in the motor, and I don't know
what it would do over the long haul because my dogs don't do well on turkey (and that was the initial reason I bought this
grinder!) so I no longer grind turkey with it.
http://www.ekitchengadgets.com/350-08-3201-w.html
What used to take me 3 to 6 hours to do (with hubby helping), is now taking me a fraction of the time. I ground up two
whole chickens today by myself and including clean up (start to finish), I was done in 45 minutes. When two of us did 20#
of backs it took 1 hour. I don't regret buying this grinder, although I did not pay that price and I would shop around
for the best price.
