# How much green tripe?



## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

A lot of people feed tripe as the whole meal a few times a week or once a week, whatever. I prefer to make it an addition to every meal...to disperse this wonder food a little every day. So I put in I'd say...hmmm...about 10-15% give or take of their meal. The rest of their meal varies every day. But the probiotics, the naturally balanced calcium to phosphorus, all the benefits make my dogs digestion work well. It's balanced such that it can be treated as a muscle meat so can replace _some _other muscle meat or it can make up the entire 80% of muscle meat...however you like. I don't know how many calories my dogs are getting. I don't really do too much figuring at all besides the approximate percentages of meat, bone and organ...then too, watching their weight and their condition, their bm's and general energy level etc. 

That's great you found a local source. Wow! It's such a hard thing to find normally.


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## FireStorm (Nov 9, 2013)

Perfect that is exactly the info I needed. I have a bunch of organic free range chicken necks and backs, some organ meat, and I'm picking up a bunch of grass fed organic ground beef next Thursday. The beef is from a local farm and it was ground at the wrong grind, so it's different than their usual product so they didn't want to sell it to their human customers. I'm getting it for half off, so I think it is worth feeding even if it is ground because it is such good quality meat. My plan is to figure out the weight of meat/organs/bone, and portion out individual meals and freeze. I'll just add the tripe as muscle meat, as I need a bit more of that any way. And yes, getting the tripe was way harder than I thought!


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

It sounds like you're finding some good sources for stuff. So, is this your first stab at a raw, fresh diet? I'd love to read about how things work out for you. If you like, here's a pretty helpful article:

Raw Fed Dogs - Natural Prey Model Rawfeeding Diet


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## FireStorm (Nov 9, 2013)

We have had a few brief experiments...when my mom butchers chickens I'll take the unwanted ones (sometimes she has too many males, and butchers them while they are a bit small for the dinner table) as well as the organs, necks, backs, feet...whatever unwanted parts she has. I portioned them out and added other meat as necessary to make the ratios work out. I've fed those portions as a snack to Hans, in addition to his regular meals. 

He has always liked it, but I hadn't planned on making it a regular thing until I really added up what I'm spending on dog food. He eats either Wysong or Ziwipeak dry (we rotate) and Ziwipeak canned because Hans seems to thrive on the higher protein, higher fat, low carb foods. I pay $50-$60 for 12 cans of Ziwipeak depending on the flavor I think. I'm hoping I can replace the canned with raw, because I've added up what I've spent on this batch of food I'm about to make and how long it should last...it seems much cheaper and I think I still have some other sources to look in to. We may do deer season this winter. We also have tons of wild hogs...not sure if that meat would be safe if it was frozen for a while.

My plan is to do 50% Wysong or Ziwipeak dry and 50% balanced raw. The biggest issue with all raw is that we travel A LOT (frequently every weekend, sometimes 1 week out of every month). We either camp (so raw wouldn't be practical) or visit family to fish (and raw just isn't an option when we stay with them). I think it makes more sense for him to eat 50/50 when we are home, and then just have 100% dry when we can't do raw, than it would be to do 100% raw sometimes and then back to 100% dry. He's done well so far having both dry and raw in our "experiments" and Wysong actually advocates supplementing their dry with balanced raw so I really think this will be ok. We did consider freeze dried raw, but Hans didn't love it, and that's really pricey for a very active spoo. I'm hoping this way he will get some of the benefits of raw, but it will still be practical for traveling.

I'm definitely not going to do any whole prey (especially not whole birds) since I expect him to retreive birds. I may even buy a grinder and do mostly ground, since I really don't want him to get any ideas about tearing up birds.


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

That sounds like a good plan. Yep, if you travel a lot, that can present a problem. You'd have to use freeze dried raw. That would work. But if he likes what he's been having, that is good because I can almost be sure my spoiled rottens wouldn't touch kibble anymore. Oh they might if I treated it as a treat. But as a meal....not likely. lol. I think the wild boar should be okay if it's frozen for a couple weeks first, as most everything should be. But don't quote me on that. I would still do more research about it. I'm still quite the amateur. Well good luck. Let us know how it all works out.


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## FireStorm (Nov 9, 2013)

I thought I would update this thread, now that we are almost to two weeks into the 50/50 raw and kibble diet. I ended up with about 24lbs of raw, portioned out into roughly 10 oz packages (I'm guessing this is a good raw portion, but we will see if that needs to be adjusted). My cost came out to just over $3 per pound, but that was using organic/free range/grass fed sources only so I think that's not too bad. 

I did end up doing everything ground (ground mostly by me). Hans thinks the food is excellent. Even though he's only eating ground, his breath smells much better and his teeth look great.

We did take a trip (2 days) and he ate his plain kibble just fine on those days. 

My mom helped me with the grinding and bagging, and I think is going to put her dogs on the same diet. I gave her 5lbs for helping me, and in the future we will just buy bigger quantities and do everything once a month or so.


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