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Post by redvsblue on Jul 13, 2023 9:19:51 GMT -5
We are *finally* able to start giving our boys grinds and I just wanted to check and make sure that we are doing this correctly:
We got chicken breasts, ground turkey, and ground beef for the different proteins and chicken livers. We also want to get duck hearts or turkey hearts. We then want to try and get a beef kidney, or I suppose any kidney we can get, but the bone is what we are most confused on. We were thinking about just doing bone meal, but with the bone what kinds of bone in meats work?
So, to sum it up, we have chicken, turkey, and beef for muscle meats and chicken livers, and then our plan is to get kidneys and hearts next and use either duck, lamb, beef, or turkey. Does this sound about right?
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Post by Corvidophile on Jul 13, 2023 20:15:43 GMT -5
You’re on the way! Just make sure hearts are in the rotation before you start, very important not to skip adding those. It’s better to choose hearts from the smallest animal you can get them from, as they’ll be the most concentrated in taurine. So avoid beef hearts if you can manage, but if you do use them, I’d say bump them up to 12% of the diet by weight instead of the usual 10%.
The diet should be delivering 10-15% of its weight in pure wet bones. If you want to combine wet whole bones with dry bone meal powder, you’ll have to figure out the percentage you’re swapping out.
If the diet is using all bone meal powder, you need to use between 1/2 teaspoon and 3/4 teaspoon (let’s average that to 5/8’s) every ten ounces of your meat/organ/heart mixture.
If the diet is using all wet bones in chunks of meat (such as wings or thighs ground up) you’ll want to use between 50% and 64% (let’s say the average of that is 57%) of your total diet weight in raw meaty bones.
For example if you want to do half bones and half bone meal powder, and assuming you’re making 10 oz this go round, you’d give about 28.5% raw meaty bones supplemented with about 3/8’s teaspoon bone meal powder.
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Questions
Jul 16, 2023 16:48:14 GMT -5
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Post by redvsblue on Jul 16, 2023 16:48:14 GMT -5
You’re on the way! Just make sure hearts are in the rotation before you start, very important not to skip adding those. It’s better to choose hearts from the smallest animal you can get them from, as they’ll be the most concentrated in taurine. So avoid beef hearts if you can manage, but if you do use them, I’d say bump them up to 12% of the diet by weight instead of the usual 10%. The diet should be delivering 10-15% of its weight in pure wet bones. If you want to combine wet whole bones with dry bone meal powder, you’ll have to figure out the percentage you’re swapping out. If the diet is using all bone meal powder, you need to use between 1/2 teaspoon and 3/4 teaspoon (let’s average that to 5/8’s) every ten ounces of your meat/organ/heart mixture. If the diet is using all wet bones in chunks of meat (such as wings or thighs ground up) you’ll want to use between 50% and 64% (let’s say the average of that is 57%) of your total diet weight in raw meaty bones. For example if you want to do half bones and half bone meal powder, and assuming you’re making 10 oz this go round, you’d give about 28.5% raw meaty bones supplemented with about 3/8’s teaspoon bone meal powder. Okay !!! Thank you so much for all that !! We bought turkey necks today as well as chicken hearts and gizzards. I was also wondering if we could either add the Know Better powder to the grinds, or if we could use the leftover Know Better Chicken Soup with the grind to help them transition better ? I worry that may be too much for them though.
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Post by Corvidophile on Jul 17, 2023 10:20:32 GMT -5
Don’t add the Know Better powder to your grinds if they’re already full of organs and bone, it’ll add too much vitamin A from the double dose of liver and might be enough bone to constipate them. What you can do is make a small batch of Know Better with plain ground meat like you had been doing previously and then mix in that to your homemade grinds.
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Questions
Jul 18, 2023 8:41:52 GMT -5
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Post by redvsblue on Jul 18, 2023 8:41:52 GMT -5
Don’t add the Know Better powder to your grinds if they’re already full of organs and bone, it’ll add too much vitamin A from the double dose of liver and might be enough bone to constipate them. What you can do is make a small batch of Know Better with plain ground meat like you had been doing previously and then mix in that to your homemade grinds. So, would we add the Know Better to the ground chicken, turkey, and beef *instead* of organs and bone ?
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Post by Corvidophile on Jul 18, 2023 13:20:35 GMT -5
Yes, as you were making it in the past. Then, add that mixture to your new mixture with organs, bones, muscle meat and heart to get them used to it. Not necessary, just if they’re afraid to try your fully homemade formula you may have to mix the two at first to get them used to it. Try 90% old/10% new, then 80/20 next step once they’re eating that, 70/30, etc. You may have issues with them picking around bone chunks at first because they’re used to a smoother soup. This will introduce bone chunks more slowly.
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