Bone Meal

annabella · #1 13th March 2009, 09:53 PM

Hi, We're going to be home cooking for our dogs soon! (Excited!) We have a fridge full of chicken breasts. My fiance is super nervous about feeding any bones, so we've decided against that. Using gmac's suggestion in another thread, we're following the 15-20% offal, 70-ish% meat, remaining in veggies, however she said to add bone meal to the meat if you weren't feeding raw bones. I was curious as to how much bone meal to add to a batch- we're doing 5 pounds of chicken in each batch.

**gmacleod** · #2 14th March 2009, 11:15 AM

If you use bone meal, be sure to get something that is meal grade (i.e. not something intended for putting on your garden!). Appropriate amount should be given by the packaging.

Another alternative could be crushed egg shells. This would supplement your calcium deficiency only, as egg shells are almost 100% calcium. In this instance, you need about 1tsp of crushed egg shell per lb of meat.

annabella · #3 15th March 2009, 07:25 PM

Awesome! Thanks so much- egg shells! Who knew! Thank god I can get on here now!!

annabella · #4 15th March 2009, 11:34 PM

Also, just out of curiousity, what else may be missing? Our "food" is made up of chicken, offal, veggies & oatmeal... and now eggshells.

**gmacleod** · #5 16th March 2009, 04:24 AM

Variety is missing

Different meats are higher or lower in a variety of different viatmins and minerals, so the dog needs to be consuming a variety of different meats (and their corresponding offal) to obtain a balanced diet. No nutritionist would ever recommend that a human ate only chicken or only fish, etc (except perhaps in the case of some extreme medical problem) in their diet. Well, it's the same for dogs. They need to have variety to obtain balance (and there should be some red meat in the diet).

The vegetables and oatmeal are more generally filler, so won't really contribute a great deal nutritionally - however, it is still wise to vary those ingredients also.

Other things that you might like to include are oily fish (such as sardines or mackeral - which can even just come straight out a can) and the occassional egg.

MypupShooter · #6 16th March 2009, 05:32 AM

[QUOTE=gmacleod;1236798]i.e. not something intended for putting on your garden!)QUOTE]

I just wanted to say, if you ever do use bone meal in your garden, I suggest you keep your boxers away. By the time I spread it out and came back to start planting, Shooter was trying to eat as much of it as she could!!!

LOL

annabella · #7 16th March 2009, 08:35 AM

Variety! Ah! haha I had a hunch that was what it was- we were going to go with whatever "meat" would be on sale- ie beef, lamb, chicken, pork, whatever, and switch it up each batch- would that be sufficient?

The offal we can get pretty much any kind pretty cheap, so we can always get the matching offal- my fiance works in a restaurant and does the ordering, so he can order us pretty much any weird thing we could ever imagine! We got 15 pounds of chicken for $10!

Also- is there such thing as TOO much egg? We were going to try and incorporate them as well- since we don't eat a lot of eggs, but want to use shells as opposed to bone meal for her calcium. We were wondering how often she can have an egg with her dinner so we don't throw them all away.

On a side note, we gave her her first batch last night & this morning, and I've never seen her scarf SO much! She has been staring at me all morning waiting for more! haha Also, she always get the runs, constantly from anything out of the ordinary- but her two poos since last night have been much more solid than anything in the past couple weeks!

AND for the first time since we've had her, she actually left her bowl looking full last night [I was actually worried she'd throw up since she ate SO fast!]! This is so exciting!!

**gmacleod** · #8 16th March 2009, 08:47 AM

There is certainly such a thing as too much egg when they're fed raw... In that case, 2 per week is about the limit for long term feeding. When cooked though, the adavin in the egg white pretty much gets neutralised/destroyed, so you can get away with feeding a bit more.

I think I'd be inclined to try to keep it below an egg per day on average though (maybe a few of the eggs might find a human use...).

On the variety - buying according to what is on sale is sensible

I think if you could manage to average rotation between 3-4 different meat types, you'd be doing pretty well.

annabella · #9 16th March 2009, 08:51 AM

Awesome! Thanks so much for all your help- I'm sure you'll hear from me more. I was figuring there was such thing as too much eggs, since no one seemed to feed a lot. We do also have a cat- which I've been told they can have them sometimes to help their coat- so I'm going to be researching that today, perhaps he can be of some use (for the first time since we got him! haha) and help dispose of some eggs in a non-wasteful way.