for those who are thinking of making their own ground raw food (for dogs or cats), here's what it looked like this afternoon in our kitchen... price calculations are after the photos (and please ignore the crappy surroundings, i can't wait to get out of this rental and into my OWN place where i will have a NICE kitchen! sigh)
Here are 16 lbs of thawed beef heart, pre-preparation:
Beef heart after slicing into proper-sized pieces:
This box contains 35 lbs of chicken frames:
Hubby chopping up the frames for the grinder:
Here are 25 lbs of chopped chicken frames, ready to go:
The trusty grinder doing its job:
The finished product: 41 lbs of ground chicken frames and beef hearts (mixed), and 8 lbs of intact frames for recreational chewing (we kept 2 lbs to make a nice chicken veggie broth for us humans, LOL). Before bagging, some people like to add stuff to the meat mix but we add it just before feeding, this allows for a greater variety of "mixers".
These 41 lbs of ground cost $21.50, so $0.52/lbs (frames were $0.22/lbs, and the beef hearts $0.99/lbs)
We have 8 lbs of intact chicken frames for $1.76
Our soup broth frames were a whopping $0.44
Prep time is fairly quick if "the man" has a good chopping arm, it's the cleanup time that's not too fun. gotta clean, wash and disinfect every surface and utensil. For us it's more than worth it, it cuts our monthly feeding costs in half and it only takes about 3 hours from start to finish, going slooowly.
The reason we grind: easier to get more raw food into the dogs (since they don't always like the "additions" such as raw fish, avocados, raw eggs, cottage cheese, chicken hearts, raw organ meats, baby-food veggies, etc), though they do like it when we add green tripe, yogurt, boneless meats... They do eat a significant portion of their raw diet in "intact form", which cleans their teeth beautifully.
Hope some of you find inspiration in this!