Creating our own grinds

[redvsblue]

Right now we are feeding our boys raw soup with just chicken grinds and Know Better powder, but we want to start doing raw grinds on our own, but before we start I want to make sure I have all the information we need! So: 

1) We are using the suggested weekly meal schedule from this site and we are doing the mix of heart and organs to make things a little easier for us. We did the math according to their weights and such and we got 8.5048g for bone-in meat daily meals, 19.85g for heart and organ (with organs being 9.925g liver and 9.925g other organ) meals, and 104.19g muscle meat meals. And we calculated that bone in meat, heart, and organ would be 59.5343g each week and 416.7401g for muscle meat weekly. I just wanna see if that makes sense to anyone lol
2) For bone-in meat, do we just get meat that just has bones in it and then grind the whole thing? Or should we be adding in bone meal powder or something? 
3) When it comes to heart and organ meats, should we use different sources? Like chicken hearts/liver/organs, duck hearts/liver/organs, things like that, or can it always be the same?

Honestly, I think that's all, I thought there would be more but I do want to make sure that those are at least figured out lol! But if there is anything else we need to know please please please let me know! I want to make sure we are doing everything right for our boys and we started them on raw soup to help us feel a little more comfortable with raw foods and now we both feel a little more confident in our ability to do grinds but we also just want to make sure we are doing everything right! 

[Corvidophile]

First, your grinder! It’s going to be a big investment. Expect to spend around $250 at least for one that won’t burn out when grinding bone. You can use generally any bone from chicken or quail, you can do Guinea pigs, mice, and rats with it too, larger animals’ bones tend to be too hard for most home grinders to handle. A lot of people get deals on chicken necks, backs, and ribs that butchers are going to be throwing out. Wings and thighs are another option you can buy anywhere. I’m not sure if it can handle most turkey bones.

Your math looks good, but keep in mind the figures on bone are going to be a little loose, as different bone in meats have different amounts of muscle still attached to them. A neck has practically no meat, while a thigh has a lot.

You can, and should, vary the animals you source meat from. You can get beef kidneys or liver at a lot of butcheries, pork muscle meat, and chicken hearts and bones, just as an example. You should also strive to add a little fish for the dense amount of fatty acids it has, in the form of salmon oil is generally well liked, or you can use salmon meat itself as part of your muscle meats. You can also feed canned cooked salmon with skin and bones included as a treat aside from your grinds. Fish bones are so soft that it’s safe to feed them cooked.

[redvsblue]

Oh my god, thank you so much!!!

For the grinder, is there a bone meal replacement we can use for a little bit until we can get a grinder? Or is that not a good idea? But thank you for reminding me we need to get a grinder at all! I completely forgot about it! We do have the Ninja Master Prep/Processor, do you know if that would work?

So, is that okay to not be so hard in terms of math on the bone in meats? Or should we just do the ones with a ton of bone, like the chicken necks?

Okay, so we should vary everything, got it!

[Corvidophile]

You can use powdered bone meal or powdered eggshell to substitute, the bone meal is better than the eggshell as it contains the nutrients of the marrow as opposed to pure calcium.

A Ninja would quickly be gummed up by bone, sorry to say. I think the cheapest you can get away with is the STX 3000 for $160, but it gets mixed reviews. Solid reviews for grinding bone start in the $400 range.

It’s good to stick to the middle range of bone-in meats like wings for figuring what would ultimately be 10% of the diet just going by pieces of meat, but you can mix for example half necks and half thighs to get to the same figure.

[redvsblue]

Okay, that's good that we will at least have an alternative for the time being; we are just moving states soon and we don't really want to add another huge object to the move. With the bone meal, how do we make sure that that's made correctly? I'm assuming we put it in just muscle meat, but how much do we put in?

Yeah, I was looking stuff up to see if it would work and that's kind of what I'm seeing too. But that's okay! Luckily, we will be able to afford something a little more expensive soon!

Ooh okay, thank you!

[Corvidophile]

The ratio of bone meal is 1/2-3/4 tsp per 8 oz of everything else, the muscles, hearts and organs combined. If their stools are runny, you give a little more bone meal, and if their stools are too hard and chalky, you give a little less. The brand I use and have had good results with is KAL. It seems like only a sprinkling, but it’s quite concentrated when dry as opposed to a wet raw bone.

[redvsblue]

So it would be 1/2-3/4 tsp per 8 oz of all the times where we need to do bone-in muscle? I'm using this sites weekly feeding schedule if that helps. Do we just start with 1/2 and then if their poops are runny do the 3/4 instead?

[Corvidophile]

No, that amount of bone meal is meant to encompass the entire diet, all the time. And yeah, just keep an eye on their stools and adjust from there. You can’t poison them with too much accidentally, but you can constipate them. So start with the lower amount, 1/2 tsp.

[redvsblue]

Okay, thank you! And I really REALLY appreciate the help. We want to do what's best for them and we want to make sure we are doing everything right! (And thank you for spelling it out by telling me to do the 1/2 tsp because that's extremely helpful!). So that 1/2 tsp goes into all meals then?

[Corvidophile]

The 1/2 tsp gets mixed into the whole thing, every eight ounces of all other muscle and organ meats you use. When you feed grinds they get muscle, organ, and bone every meal together. I try to help when I can, you’re welcome.

[redvsblue]

So, I am using this sites weekly feeding schedule and it says like morning meal would be bone-in meat, but then the afternoon could be bone-in or muscle, and other days it says organ and such but we are doing the 3 mix thing, so are you saying that we shouldn't do the morning and afternoon different meals and that they should all have muscle, bone-in, organ, and heart meat in the morning and afternoon?

[Corvidophile]

Oh, I see where the confusion is coming in, I think. That menu is for the frankenprey feeding style, where you give whole chunks of food to them. If you want, you can grind out individual organ and heart mix, muscle mix, and bone-in mix and feed them on the scheduled weekly times, but usually when feeding grinds what people do is combine everything, all the meals, into one mix and feed that one ground mix constantly.

[redvsblue]

OOOOOOOOOH okay; we don't have to divvy it out, we can just combine everything at once and feed that to them! That's extremely helpful, oh my god, thank you! For the bone meal, you said 1/2 tsp for every 8 ounces of muscle meat and organ, are those separate numbers then? Like every 8 ounces of muscle gets 1/2 tsp and then every 8 ounces of organ gets 1/2 tsp or is it for every 8 ounces of them combined it's 1/2 tsp? Again, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR HELPING!!!!! We just want the best for our boys and recently they were diagnosed (again, sadly) with helicobacter and ferret coronavirus so we are back on doing 3 meds a day 3 times a day and I want to get their diet under control so hopefully that can help with a few things as well.

[Corvidophile]

It’s 1/2 tsp per 8 oz of everything, the muscle and organs and hearts combined. Sucks that they’re still having stomach issues, I hope it clears up.

[redvsblue]

Okay! Thank you so much for explaining all that!! I really really appreciate it! And thank you, I hope it does too I hate that the person who had them before us didn't care for them the way they should've because now they've been sick almost their entire lives ...