Beef and chicken hearts??

Are those considered "organs" like liver and kidneys when it comes to feeding your dogs raw?

I know your suppose to take things slow and steady especially with the organs so I have not given Teagan any yet...

But I was reading somewhere that hearts are not considered an organ, but a muscle meat?

So far I have introduced chicken, beef and pork slowly into Teagan's diet and we have had no issues as of yet.. Oh and she decided on her own this weekend that Mole had to be introduced to her diet too!!! SICK THINK lol

So I was wondering If I could slowly introduce the beef and chicken hearts or if I should wait a few more months like I would do with the liver, kidneys??

I believe it would be OK as hearts are basically muscle. They do however have high concentrations of good stuff like taurine (which is good for your dogs' I heart I would imagine; it's vital that cats get enough of it or they get heart failure). So they work as muscle and organ meats.

Hearts are indeed muscle meat, it should be fine to feed them.

It's basically straight muscle so just keep in mind if you make a meal of oh say a whole beef heart you'll likely end up with a sloppy stool.

Thanks for the help again guys,

Kat I wont be giving her a whole heart or anything thing. I bought her a beef heat, but I cut it up into 1-2 ounce chunks so I can mix it with the rest of her raw meal.

That's the way to do it ^.^

BTW if you can find a local butcher to let you dig out the tripe that's a great way to get organs. Another favorite way that a ton of folks here use who are on prey model is a rat from a reputable rodent supply house.

Rats are illegal here BOO!!!

what about big feeder mice?? and do you get already killed mice/rat or let the dogs kill the rodent??

I'm guessing you get the already frozen ones?? ha ha

No... I kill my own mice if I pick up live, honestly if I didn't half skin them I doubt the papillons would eat them. Most people I know use a frozen rodent supplier or raise their own to proper size, off them, and then freeze them.

Mice are a great food source. Almost perfectly balanced. I just prefer as little killing as needed - it takes more mice to feed a dog than rats, rabbits (which need a fat additive), or chicken.

Thanks again Kat I'm gonna have to look into that. Teagan will eat a mouse that she has caught herself, but I don't know about one that's dead and not skinned. Although it does not hurt to try.

I'm gonna try and persuade my dad to shoot a deer this year. We can dress and all that stuff ourselves, but we will see it is allot of work.

Kat, have you ever heard of anyone bringing road kill home? I used to train this guys horses who used to always bring dead deer home and other animals that were killed by a vehicle and let his dogs have at er'.

I do know people who do regularly. This state "owns" it's roadkill so it's illegal to pickup. The state here picks it up and if it's fresh enough it goes to the prison system. So make sure to check your laws before you get out the good shovel.

We can salvage road kill here, and I was going to start doing it and letting them tear into it, until I found out that we have Chronic Wasting Disease in the deer population here. It's closely related to Mad Cow, and I'm not willing to risk my dogs getting hold of any contaminated tissue. The only way I'd use it now would be if I processed it myself, making sure I didn't get any brain or spinal tissue in the meat.

Same here. It's a shame because driving back and forth through th ecountry the last month there's TONS of deer on the side of the road. But CWD is a big, big issue around here as well.

Oh crummy about the "Mad deer disease"

We get tons and tons of hit porcipines on the country road that I live on, but I dunno If I should give em' that.

My brother also shoots alot of the nuisance pigons so I might look into giving Teagan that. If the meats ok to give.

I just am really hoping my dad will bag a deer this year for moi. We have an over population of them right now. And he can show me how to dress one...YAY!!!

I dont think our deer here have any issues with the "Mad deer" but I will look more into it.

I just want to point out that green tripe is also considered a muscle meat meal, as is heart. Neither count as "organs" nutritionally speaking.

My dogs eat a ton of beef heart, its one of our main boneless meats.

For the 10% organs portion of the diet, at least 5% of that should be liver and other common organs to make up the other 5% are things like kidney and spleen, etc. I mostly just feed beef liver and kidney for organs, but I did get a score of 10lbs of assorted rabbit organs a while back which was pretty sweet.