Turkey.

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#2
only on a dog forum, would people be planning their dogs thanksgiving meal:p

the girls will get a scoop of mashed potatoes, some turkey and peas mixed in with a little bit of gravy... yes i know not the healthiest meal, but they eat it up like it is sooo good:D

Elissa
 

DanL

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#3
I think we have a coupon for a free turkey. Since we already have ours, the dogs will get the free one. They'll eat it all over the course of a few days, raw of course.
 
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Bobsk8

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#4
I think we have a coupon for a free turkey. Since we already have ours, the dogs will get the free one. They'll eat it all over the course of a few days, raw of course.
Don't you think they would like it better " roasted"? ;)
 

DanL

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#5
They would eat it either way, but if roasted, then couldn't enjoy the bones. Last year we did the same thing, got them their own little turkey and gave it to them, they loved it.
 

elegy

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#7
whole thing, raw. in meal-sized portions of course.

my dogs are getting the legs from the family turkey, since nobody eats them.

some dogs don't tolerate turkey well and can end up with GI upset.
 

DanL

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#8
Bones and all, Dan? Insides... all that, uhh, icky stuff?
Yup. The bag of icky stuff is especially prized by the gang. Gizzard, heart, liver. It'll take them a few days to go thru a whole turkey, even with 3 of them. Like Elegy said, it's split into meal size portions, maybe 4 or 5 lbs total between the 3 of them per day.
 

dogstarsleddogs

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#10
My dogs get all the guts, leftover mashed taters, gravy, and pan juices. Mix it all together, and give it to them over about 4 or so feedings! Yummy!
 

Mordy

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#11
The only things people really need to be aware of are that

* if their dogs aren't used to a relatively high fat content in their diet, you don't want to feed them any turkey skin, either raw or cooked. Especially for dogs who eat nothing but kibble all year, it can mean tummy upset and diarrhea at best and a pancreatitis attack in the worst case.
* never, ever feed any of the bones after the bird has been cooked.
* if a dog is not used to eating (raw) bones, turkey drumsticks and wings are not the best items to get them started on, especially not unsupervised!

I went on a shopping spree after Thanksgiving last year and bought about 4 or 5 cheap turkeys that were on special the next day, for less than 50 cents a pound. Processed them all (bagged in daily feeding portions for more efficient storage) and was disappointed I couldn't fit more into my little pet food freezer. :D
 

Julie

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#12
Just curious.... Mordy
Were the "on special" turkeys frozen?
If so you thaw them out, process them and then refreeze right?
How exactly do you process a raw turkey? Do you have a meat saw?
It really seems like it would be a hard messy process to do 4 or 5 raw turkeys. Lol Again, just curious.

And can you safely thaw out frozen meats, and then refreeze them without cooking?

Thanks.
 

DanL

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#13
I thaw and freeze stuff for the dogs quite a bit. Sometimes I get a big package of ribs or something and I don't have time to package it, so the whole thing gets frozen til later.

For turkeys, a good butcher knife is all you need if you are just cutting it into meal sized chunks. I take off the wings and legs, separate the thigh and drumstick. Then split the carcass in half, remove the breast with the bones and cut into portions, and then cut the back into portions.
 

Mordy

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#15
Dan pretty much covered it all. :)

I always re-freeze, since I buy in bulk and most of the things I get come frozen. My "pet food freezer" is relatively small (7 cubic feet or so?), so I have to repackage everything to make the best possible use of it.

The most useful thing to buy when feeding raw is a good cleaver though. My dog only weighs 28 pounds and my cats between 9 and 16 pounds, so they only eat small portions. One turkey wing (depending on size) is 2-4 meals for Quigley, so I have to split things up a little more than someone with larger dogs.

Things do tend to get a little messy, and after processing about 2 months worth of food I'm glad I don't have to do it again for a while. :D
 

DanL

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#16
lol Mordy, I hear you on the processing part! I recently got 20lbs of beef heart-it was like a murder scene in the sink with all the blood. We also recently bought a case of whole broilers and a case of leg quarters. There were 19 broilers in the case, 68lbs. Between them and 40lbs of leg quarters it was quite a bit of work to get it all ready for the freezer. Luckily my son has been working at the deli counter at the grocery and rolled thru the case of broilers, since he wraps the rotissere chickens at work. :)

I have to reportion a good bit of what we feed. Bruzer only gets about 6-8oz of RMB type stuff which is usually a hunk off of a larger piece that Midnite and Gunnar are getting. I'll also pull out a pork shoulder or something else as muscle meat, and carve portions off of that for a few days in a row until Gunnar gets the bony part with a bunch of meat still attached.
 
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#18
should be fine Pomp, the bones after being cooked can splinter and so they are a concern...although Moro has snatched a few cooked chicken bones from the trash in the past and crunched them right down, and was fine. There should be no problem with boneless cooked meat
 

Mordy

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#19
The worst thing is when I buy tripe, it comes in 5 pound blocks, 4 to a box and I have to repackage it into ~3-4 oz baggies since I don't feed it on a daily basis. Talk about stinky!

I'm glad my raw supplier offers a coarse-ground organ blend (liver, kidney, spleen, lungs, trachea, heart, tongue and cheek meat) that is easily divided up, so I don't have to deal with processing all those things individually. I can just semi-thaw it, cut it into portions and then repackage.

Pomp, cooked, boneless meat is fine.
 

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