# New to raw feeding- how do YOU weigh bones?



## MATHOMAS (Oct 5, 2013)

I have been doing a lot of research on raw feeding over the past month to try and prepare myself for the puppy I will be getting this November. I know about how great feeding raw is for dogs, and I want to make sure I have as much information as possible before I bring my bundle of joy home. So, most of what I'm reading says the diet should be 80% meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, and 5% other organs. I'm just wondering how all you experts ensure these are the ratios that your dogs are getting? Particularly when it comes to bone. For example, if you feed your dogs chicken legs, are you actually de-boning the legs and weighing the bones separately from the meat to ensure that your bones are making up 10% of the weekly diet. Or would you just feed the entire chicken leg as is? Any information I can get would be greatly recommended.

Also, I know this gets asked all the time, and the answer differs for everyone...but...
I live in a small town in the Mid-West. How on earth can I do this affordably? About how much does it cost you guys to feed one male GSD a month? (my puppy is a male). I looked up some options for ordering online, but all of the sites I saw were extremely expensive. Any information/tips for raw feeding on a budget would also be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!


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## blackshep (Aug 3, 2012)

This is what I got confused about too.

the way someone explained it to me is that some days you might feed too much of something, sometimes not enough. It balances over time. Your own diet isn't balanced 100% each day, but that is why you are supposed to have variety in your diet, so that you don't have any long term, chronic deficiencies and that is why variety is key in raw (after the initial introduction, you want to keep it simple)

I am pretty new to raw, so I feed a commercially prepared, organic raw diet. I feel a bit safer feeding this to start out and I do the odd meal with whole food. I am getting braver little by little and adding a frozen sardine, or a frozen duck foot into the food and letting her crunch that up. Then I started adding a chicken back or turkey neck with smaller softer bones, that type of thing.

I have heard a lot of people put ads on kijiji or craigslist looking for meat, some people have gotten entire freezers full of deer or moose meat that got a bit freezer burned or that type of thing.


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## MATHOMAS (Oct 5, 2013)

Thanks for responding.

I guess the only thing still holding me up is how do you know unless you are actually removing all the bones you are feeding and weighing them that it is balancing over time? And don't some pieces have more bones in them than others? It's really just the bones that confuse me, trying to ensure that they are getting enough/not too many bones. I just don't know how to do that.

Any additional insight you have would be greatly appreciated.


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## LoriH (Apr 16, 2013)

Don't over think the process, I did. Here's what worked for me and I know of a few others who follow the same plan.

When I started my puppy on raw at approx. 10 weeks old I fed the following:

Breakfast - 6 oz. ground meat (chicken for 2 weeks during the transition to raw)
6 oz. raw veggies, oats and or sweet potato and cod liver oil

Lunch - Same as breakfast but add 2 oz. organ meat No cod liver oil

Dinner - 6 oz. ground chicken necks since he couldn't quite chew the bones yet. Mixed with veggies, oats, or sweet potato. Plain Greek yogurt with live cultures.

Once a day add vitamin and mineral supplement to ensure puppy was getting all the nutrients he needed. 

After approx. 2 weeks I added beef as a 2nd protein and alternated between chicken and beef for breakfast and lunch.

Once he started teething and I knew he could chew the necks, no more grinding meat.

By the time he was 5 months we switched to 2 meals a day and then for bone I added turkey necks and alternate between that and chicken.

Check for Raw feeding groups on Yahoo, that's how I found the local CoOp. Very affordable though when you buy in bulk once every other month or so you'll spend a few hours bagging everything into individual portions.

There are many who say the dogs don't need the veggies or fruits but I give them as snacks as well and they can't hurt. We see a holistic vet and he totally supports the diet.

Good Luck.


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## volcano (Jan 14, 2013)

dog food uses carcases dried up,ground into powder. Then they add vitamins to replace lost nutritional value. So to cover my bases I feed raw but also include a meal of yogurt,pumpkin, and vitamin supplements.


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## David Taggart (Nov 25, 2012)

I don't think anybody ever estimated that. Our skeleton is the heaviest part of the body, bones are much heavier than muscles or fat. Buy lamb steaks, beef on the bone, whole chiken, whole rabbit ( remove leg and arm bones, clavicles and shoulder blades, they are dangerous ) - the visual mass of the bone to the visual mass of the meat should be circa 1 to 4, like in the body.


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## E.Hatch (Sep 24, 2013)

Maybe I'm dense but I'm still not quite sure how people measure the bone either. I just started and last night we cut off most of the meat from the chicken quarter, weighed the bone, and then added the meat we had cut off back in and some additional MM. Surely there's an easier way but I can't estimate something I have no idea the weight of.


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## Mrs.P (Nov 19, 2012)

To find the amount of bone in a piece of meat you will multiply the weight of the whole piece by the percentage of bone. So for example if you are feeding a 5lbs whole chicken, you will multiply 5 x the percent bone for that piece. So 5 x .31= 1.55. That means there is 1.55lbs of bone in that whole chicken.

You can look up the percentages of bone here

Foods List

So i searched for 

Chicken, broilers or fryers, leg, meat and skin, raw (chicken quarter)

and then clicked full report

Food Group: Poultry Products 
Carbohydrate Factor: 3.87 Fat Factor:9.02 Protein Factor: 4.27 Nitrogen to Protein Conversion Factor: 6.25 
Refuse:  27% Refuse Description: Bone

So the refuse is 27% which according to the description is bone so just weight the chicken quarter and 27% of that weight is bone 




Show Foods


Hope that makes sense!


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## I_LOVE_MY_MIKKO (Oct 4, 2006)

You can find the approximate percentage of bone in different cuts of meat online. What I did was take the meat off of the bone of three pieces of the same type of meat the first time I fed it and weighed them and then averaged the number. I did this once and just use that average. 

Many people choose to not calculate the diet the way that I do it and instead opt to calculate the portions of raw meaty bones vs. muscle meat (I think many people do about a 55/45 ratio or something like that). Really, it works out to the same amount of bone, but what they are doing is weighing it with the meat on it (hence the higher percentage needed in the diet). I prefer the other method because of the vast differences in RMBs (some have a lot of meat compared to bone and vice versa).

Either method is fine, it's just what you're comfortable with.


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## robk (Jun 16, 2011)

I have been feeding raw for about a year and a half. My male was started 100% on raw at one year and my 6 month old female was weaned straight to raw. I don't measure anything and I don't wight anything. I just eye ball it. I feed about 50% muscle meat, about 45% raw meaty bone (no I don't debone it). I feed about 5% organ meat. I feed what looks like about a 1lb of food per meal twice daily. I keep an eye on their body condition. If they start looking to ribby, I will up the amounts a little. I also keep an eye on the poop. As long as it is coming out firm and small (about the size of a pecan) I am satisfied. If it gets a little loose, I might add a little extra raw meaty bone for the next couple of meals. 

As for shopping. I found a local independent grocer that I get all my food from. I know what day they do their mark downs and I try to get there early. For example, I know that on tuesday morning they mark down any unsold beef from the week end. If I catch them in the act of mark downs, I can usually get them to bundle me some for an even better price. I usually feed chicken quarters, pork necks, turkey wings, anykind of marked down beef. We raise chickens so I also include a lot of raw egg. Usually every other day I will add a raw egg to one of the meals. Some times I will had sweet potato or yogert as well. I try to give them vitamin C and fish oil when I have it but I don't always have it on hand. I try to keep it real simple. Thus far, both of my dogs have been very healthy and look amazing.

Buying everything the grocery store, I spend about $50 per week for two dogs. About the same as I would probably spend on Taste of the wild or some other semi-premium dog food.


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## robk (Jun 16, 2011)

robk said:


> I have been feeding raw for about a year and a half. My male was started 100% on raw at one year and my 6 month old female was weaned straight to raw. I don't measure anything and I don't wight anything. I just eye ball it. I feed about 50% muscle meat, about 45% raw meaty bone (no I don't debone it). I feed about 5% organ meat. I feed what looks like about a 1lb of food per meal twice daily. I keep an eye on their body condition. If they start looking to ribby, I will up the amounts a little. I also keep an eye on the poop. As long as it is coming out firm and small (about the size of a pecan) I am satisfied. If it gets a little loose, I might add a little extra raw meaty bone for the next couple of meals.
> 
> As for shopping. I found a local independent grocer that I get all my food from. I know what day they do their mark downs and I try to get there early. For example, I know that on tuesday morning they mark down any unsold beef from the week end. If I catch them in the act of mark downs, I can usually get them to bundle me some for an even better price. I usually feed chicken quarters, pork necks, turkey wings, anykind of marked down beef. We raise chickens so I also include a lot of raw egg. Usually every other day I will add a raw egg to one of the meals. Some times I will had sweet potato or yogert as well. I try to give them vitamin C and fish oil when I have it but I don't always have it on hand. I try to keep it real simple. Thus far, both of my dogs have been very healthy and look amazing.
> 
> Buying everything the grocery store, I spend about $50 per week for two dogs. About the same as I would probably spend on Taste of the wild or some other semi-premium dog food.


My two raw fed dogs


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## erfunhouse (Jun 8, 2013)

Bone And Food Values For Raw Feeding Dogs | Dogs Naturally Magazine

This breaks down the most commonly fed RMBs so you know the AVERAGE percentage of bone in the meat. It takes quite a bit of math to break it all down and perfect your percentages. I created a meal, then did the math, and I was pretty darn close...like others said, it will all balance out over time.


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