 Barked: Fri Aug 5, '11 8:56am PST |
 | |  | | Feed a bit more and work in the organs as you have been doing. Have you been just working on one organ? Do that, just chicken or pork or beef liver or kidney and move to the next once that one is okay with his gut. And are you feeding daily bone and bone with that organ? Bone with organ works well for Max. Max needed daily bone for over a year and I won't feed organ without some bone in the meal.
I guess it might be optimal to feed 10% of the total diet in organ but if you are feeding more than 3% of his body weight I don't know that he actually needs more vitamin A and all that good stuff that comes from the organs.
Does he have blow outs when he gets too much organ or is it just less than optimal poop? As long as Max doesn't need to take excessive poop trips outside I don't much care that poop isn't perfectly firm. It is nice having a back yard!
Max was really heavy when we started raw and it was a long haul to good body condition. It is a fine line between just right and skinny. I like to feel his hip bones but if a dip starts between them I get nervous and that can happen in a couple days. I don't go by weight or he would still be on short rations. He was 33 pounds until he was 7 years old, ballooned to 44 pounds on my home cooking because I couldn't weigh properly with that lousy old scale and is now 38 pounds with all the bony bits easily felt and huge thighs holding a lot of the new healthy muscle.
Eating big is how Max got to his ideal body condition. I suppose it can work in reverse, don't know. You don't have to use whole prey, it just needs to be hard to eat meals. Chicken doesn't work, whole pork neck, big chunks of bony pork or lamb shoulder and beef rib racks do. You might see if those long racks of BBQ beef ribs are a good enough price in your neck of the woods, they have quite a bit of fat on them. Remember he won't and shouldn't eat most of the bone on some of these items so they end up costing more than the sticker price. And it is really important to work up to big meals otherwise he won't be utilizing the food well. A single beef rib would be a good sized daily portion, you might give that a few times, then 2 left in a rack a few times and when that plus a little organ is good try 3. If he doesn't clean the bone you can rinse it off and offer again the next day too. Max gets enough bone off even though it doesn't seem like he has eaten much, the joint end is apparently soft enough to eat easily. I don't fast Max, I just feed short rations for as many meals as it takes to make the ounces even out to his usual 70 ounces a week.
Next time you pack up meals maybe pack 2-3 days worth at a time so you can be more flexible per meal. I packed daily bags at first too but now my containers hold 2-3 days of food and I might have the end of one and the beginning of another in the refrigerator at one time. Keep the organ separate if you possibly can as well. Just have two bags out daily right now, the meat is fine for several days refrigerated. Feed organ with bone and it should be okay. |  |  | |  |
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. I am feeding about 4.4oz of meat a day and the 2/3 days worth of bone every 2-3 days and whatever organ I can get in.
