Homemade food q's

[gooeydog]

Hoping somebody can help me out with this, as usual, I'm a bit clueless as to how to work it out. The problem:

Been feeding a bit of lightly cooked (poached, still a bit pink) chicken (occasionally fish) with my twos' meals a few times a week lately, and we've reached the point where I need to be adding calcium too with the meat (it's been under an ounce so far for Goo, and just a few pieces for Annie), but I'm running into a snag. I was planning on using eggshells as a calcium source, but I can NOT get these things crushed to a powder, no matter how hard I try. They've been dried out in the oven, and I was using one of those pulverizing things, but no luck. I either need to improve my egg crushing methods (help!?) or find another source of calcium (is it safe/effective to give store bought calcium supplements?) before I can move on.

Next up, I bought livers to use as organ meat, once or twice a week? And it's ok to cook these same as the other meats? I don't know of any other organs on chicken, so suggestions there would be helpful too.

For what it's worth, the dogs love getting "real meat" mixed in their food, so it's nice to see them so eager to gobble down their food.

[TDG]

the best thing for making egg shell powder is a coffe grinder. :) it works extremely well.

if you want to use a store bought supplement, i'd recommend animal essentials natural calcium ([url]http://animalessentials.com/calcium.html[/url]), since it's from a plant source (seaweed) and doesn't have the problem of possible heavy metal contamination, such as for example bone meal. the nice thing about the AE supplement is that it also contains other trace minerals in naturally occurring amounts.

liver is nice, you can feed about 5% of the daily feeding amount every day, or 20% of the weekly intake once a week (or split that up any way you like). i wouldn't feed just liver exclusively tho, include any organs you possibly can in order to bring variety into the diet.

heart, lung and tripe are organs, but when it comes to feeding they are not considered "organ meat" - you can include them in any reasonable amounts as you would normal muscle meat. heart is especially great because it contains taurine.

[gooeydog]

Thanks!

We don't have a coffee grinder, so I'll try to pick up a cheap one for the eggshells, till then, I've made some progress with a crab mallet to crush the eggshells, then sifting them to keep back any larger pieces for more crushing... takes a while, but it works. They had 2 oz chicken today with their kibble, and I added in the powder, so we'll see how it goes. I actually had quite a bit more powder that I was crushing up, but when I was away a couple weekends ago, my mom thought it was ALL supposed to go into their food (made the mistake of leaving it sitting in the kitchen, and she thought it was cornmeal :o ) and they got all 10 eggshells :o . When I came home the next morning, I was wondering what all the little white specks were in their poo :oops: and was puzzled when my mom told me about putting all the "cornmeal" in their food, until I figured out what it was. I think most of it just passed through undigested (sure looked that way), so I just didn't feed anymore for a couple weeks to be sure it had all cleared out.

As a side thought, do you know if something like oyster shells could be ground and used for calcium? Not really planning on finding out, but I know a few who have used it for other animals and it just got me wondering.

The liver plan sounds good, but I'm curious as to how to get the other organs... never seen any of them (aside from yucky bleached out tripe, which they sure aren't getting) in stores, do you just go ask for it or what?

[TDG]

yes, you can use oyster shell, coral calcium and several other supplements for calcium as well. you just need to figure out the proper amounts.

bone meal is very commonly used, but i'm not a big fan of that since it also adds a lot of phosphorus, which isn't needed.

there aren't many places that sell all the "unmentionable" parts, your best bet are usually ethnic stores, or if you can locate one, a meat processing place/slaughter house.

[gooeydog]

Sounds good, thanks again :)

[DogPaddle]

I don't worry about grinding my eggshells very fine. The boys will eat them mostly whole but a grind them down a bit so they get mixed throughout the prepared meal.

[TDG]

grinding affects absorption of the calcium tho. the finer you grind, the better the body can absorb it, and it [i]has[/i] to absorb it in order to balance the phosphorus content. :)

[DogPaddle]

So if I'm not finding eggshell flakes or white chalky poops I'm good there, right?

[gooeydog]

Sheesh, things are just not going my way today. Yesterday Annie had a mild case of the runs, I figured it was probably from the chicken in their food the night before and gave her and Goo both some pumpkin, hoping to clear Annie up (seems to have worked) and head off any issues with Goo. Last night, there were two small piles of puke on the floor in my room, one with some grass in it, both from Goo. I was suspicious, but figured it was no big deal since she frequently gorges herself on grass, and sometimes it comes back up. Today, I was babysitting my cousin, and had Goo in the living room with us, she was in her "bomb shelter" behind a chair, and kept coming out to look at me. I kept shooing her back in, until I heard a soft [i]whine[/i] and looked over to see her shifting uncomfortably... OH :o That's what you WANT!!!.... stuck the baby in her playpen (where she screamed, spoiled little brat :roll: ) ran Goo outside, she puked again once we got down the steps, then a few minutes later took a runny poo. Same every hour or two for the rest of the morning, except she only puked once more, and the poo puddles became increasingly smaller. Around 2pm, when she was showing no signs of slowing down, I gave her some anti-poo meds, and they seem to have finally kicked in this evening, as she hasn't went in several hours. I'm hoping it's just from the food, and that she hasn't caught whatever Haley had a few weeks ago (GDV, I think it was, some sort of gastrointestinal inflammation, basically, the vets told us it just had to run its course, and gave us meds to calm her stomach). She's still acting her normal self, so hopefully by tomorrow, everything will be back to normal. I think I'm going to hold her food tonight, and maybe give her a bit more pumpkin, I feel bad, but don't want to set off a chain reaction. Obviously two oz of meat was too much after not having any for over a week, so I'm going to have to cut it back some more and work back up. I'm wondering now if I shoundn't just add in some pumpkin everytime I give any meat with their food, as a preventive measure?

[TDG]

awww i'm sorry to hear you are having such troubles. fasting for a while is a good idea tho, to letthe stomach settle down.

there is no harm in feeding canned pumpkin like any other veggie, so you can definitely include it in any reasonable amount.

dog paddle - yes, if you don't see any undigested pieces of shell, you are fine. :)

[DogPaddle]

Cool, thanks.