Has anyone made dog food out of an aged ewe...please read

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The price for breeding ewes is worthless and I need to downsize. I was wondering if I took a ewe and made her completely into hamburger, then cooked it, pressured canned it. Would this be good for dogs. I have three dogs that I spend a quite a bit on for dog food! You see even with the dry food (Pedigree), I give each dog 1/2 can of Pedigree wet food (large can), which is .90 cents a can, which I use 1 and 1/2 can a day. Please no one get mad at me for have a ewe butchered. I raise the sheep for meat! As it is I have more lambs than I can sell or enjoy which I figure it costs me 80.00 a year to feed one ewe alone and I don't need her off springs. Thanks, Debbie

-- debbie (bwolcott@cwis.net), April 26, 2002

Answers

I don't think that I would go through that much trouble (cooking and pressure canning)if I was going to feed it to my dog, unless you have no other way to store it.

Another question is will your dogs eat it and how will you combine it with other things to balance their diet.

-- BC (desertdweller44@yahoo.com), April 26, 2002.


Debbie, We always have any of our cull ewes butchered at a local federally inspected packing plant. I would much rather know that they will have a quick humane end, usually within the hour after I deliver them, than sending one to an auction where they coul suffer needlessly on long journeys, packed into trucks or even worse go to another farm where they could be mistreated or kept to breed when the reason I cull them is prolapses, mastitis etc. In the end, this is the best choice. Now what to do with the meat. We use it ourselves as our prime source of meat. Also, we have a friend who is a certified organic vegetable farmer who likes mutton ( as the meat is called after they are a year old) He pays for the processing and we get boxes of great organic vegetables! I usually have the meat done in stew cubes and ground. Also get the neck slices and shanks and liver, heart and kidneys back.Its all put up in 1 to 1 1/2 pound packages for the freezer. If I use any for the dogs, I thaw it out and just put in the crockpot or on top of the wood stove in winter with some water . But there is absolutely no reason you can't use it as well. Just tell your butcher to trim off extra fat if they are over finished and let the carcass age a day or two longer than they usually do. Truthfully we have never noticed much difference in the meat from an older sheep than from a lamb that is at 100 pounds, market weight. Hope this helps. Kate

-- Kate in New York (Kate@sheepyvalley.com), April 26, 2002.

Why on earth would you cook it? Just freeze and thaw when needed. Raw meat is much healthier for your dogs, and I guarantee they'll like it better too. I feed all my ground lamb to my dogs, as I don't much care for it, unlike the rest of the lamb meat. We also feed our dogs all the cuts from all the livestock we raise, that we don't like as well. Works great, we get the premium cuts with no waster.

-- CJ (sheep@katahdins.net), April 26, 2002.

After I asked, I relized I could have it frozen into one pound packages. I had never heard of serving it raw. It kinda of scares me, although...2 of my dogs seem to bring home all kinds of animals ranging from skeltons (even a horses hoof once, I ran outdoors to make sure all my horses had hooves! wasn't from anything I ever owned) to raccoons, possems, snakes so.. if they were going to get sick they would get sick of the junk they dig up I would think. Why is meat better or healthier raw than cooked? I don't think I would eat it because I slaughter 3 good lambs a year for our freezer alone. I make a good portion of the meat in to bratworths, Italian saugages and then the rest into chops, roasts etc. We also raise cattle but I never bother having one of them done up for us, we pretty much eat lamb, chix. fish. Thanks, Debbie

-- debbie (bwolcott@cwis.net), April 26, 2002.

I own a small natural-food type pet supply in Southern California, so I feel I can give you some feedback about something I know about & feel very strongly about. Getting your dogs away from Pedigree is a wonderful idea. (Check out the label on the dry food... I'm betting you have by-products, and artificial colors and/or preservatives in that bag)

Using your ewes would be excellent for dog food. You can find recipes for home made "stew" which you would cook your mutton with some vegetables, and maybe add some vitamin/mineral supplements. I guess you could can it, if that is the type of storage space you have available. Freezing it in small batches would be another way to store it, if you have that space available.

There are many proponents of the "B.A.R.F" diet. (Bones And Raw Food) Raw foods are better than cooked because the enzymes stay intact. These help your dogs digest their food better, and the "good" bacteria healthy in the dogs digestive tract. I am including a couple of websites that I found with the simple search "B.A.R.F. recipes" I scanned them quickly, but it appears that they have good info, suggestions for implementation, and other very helpful links for more reading.

http://personal.atl.bellsouth.net/atl/a/d/adamas1/barfdiet.html

http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/tripd/food.htm

Good Luck!

-Robbie

-- robbie in So. CA (rraley@sbcglobal.net), April 26, 2002.



Debbie, Lots of us do exactly what you are proposing to do. We use any left over scraps of lamb, venison, pork, chicken, etc. I sometimes add rice to meat and juices, and sometimes veggies, too. The dogs love it! So does my checkbook, and it makes me feel good that I haven't wasted as much of the meat. I can more than freeze it, so I can save the freezer space. Jan

-- Jan in Co (Janice12@aol.com), April 26, 2002.

Should you be feeding sheep's offal to your dogs? What about hydatids?

-- john hill (john@cnd.co.nz), April 27, 2002.

I personally would never feed this diet to my dogs, and I don't know anyone who does. We're afraid of salmonella and botulism plus a few more things. And the vets say it's not a diet for the domestic dog. If you feed B.A.R.F. to your dogs, it'll cost you to keep the diet balanced so the dogs get all their nutrients.

I have always fed our dogs the bones when we're thru eating. (The only table scraps they get.) A vet told me how to teach the dogs to eat chicken bones without getting hurt. Since I eat my food cooked, so are the bones the dogs get. None have ever been a problem.

My dogs live 15-20 years on their free fed dry dog food diet. To each his own. Here's the diet:

The B.A.R.F. Diet

-- ~Rogo (rogo2222@hotmail.com), April 27, 2002.

Many people do so, but I'd be inclined to at least have the hind legs turned into steaks for yourself (sawn across the grain and bone). They can be a bit stringy as roasts unless you pot-roast them for a long time; but they make fine big steaks, and cut across the grain the fibres are too short to be stringy. Marinate them and then grill them, or stew them.

Use the rest for dog food, and keep the bones for the dogs as well - dogs need bones to chew. However, be careful of the bones from chops/cutlets (the bits that include a part of the backbone). Once the dogs are done with them, you are left with a spike (bit of rib) sticking up from a bit of flat backbone, and it makes a quite effective caltrop if it lands the wrong way - not something you want to tread on.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), April 27, 2002.


Iditerod guys feed all kinds of things to those athletes that we would think yucky. I know that lamb is the top of the list. But they do start with a good qaulity (i.e. also very expensive)dry also in most cases. Rice is important also for the carbs. Especially for high energy/working dogs. That might be something, to search the iditorod stuff and find feeding stuff for them. Remember to check for an off season diet )or modify for it) since your dog isn't going to go 1800 miles! One other point.

Side note: I have been told by highly experianced dog mushers: if the dog is over weight and you need to cut down on his intake, he is going to feel hungry till he gets used to the new intake. Trick: canned green beans as a filler, so he feels full without the extra calories and not unhealthy, gradually cuttting those back till they are not there at all in a couple weeks.

-- Novina in ND (homespun@stellarnet.com), April 27, 2002.



This is very interesting, I was just looking at the ingredients on the dog foods. Also, I buy a cheap dog junk food for snacks. 2 of the 3 dogs probably do cover a lot of ground and when I scream they come a running, even if there a mile or so back. I usually give them this cheap snack or sometimes hot dogs. I think I make some into jerky and some into hot dogs out of the cull ewe for them. I generally have a few cull ewes every year and have never done this before. Now when we were all preparing for Y2K I pressure canned quite a bit of hamburger but really do not like pressure hamburger when I have my frozen lamb hamburger which I use inplace of beef. Anyway not wanting to store for life I mixed it with rice and the dogs loved it (hard to tell with one dog I think it would eat anything)but the other two (females) will smell before eating and they both went for the food. So, thanks I will look up the sites. I wonder how you put vitamins into the meals, I guess by adding some vegs to the mutton.

-- debbie (bwolcott@cwis.net), April 27, 2002.

Debbie, another site to check out with FAQ about the B.A.R.F. diet is:

http://www.njboxers.com/faqs.htm

This may help you figure out the vitamin/mineral aspect, and also the botulism/salmonella concern that Rojo brought up.

-Robbie

-- Robbie in So. CA (rraley@sbcglobal.net), April 27, 2002.


Feeding your dog raw food is both dangerous and unnecessary. The enzymes in your dog's digestive tract are very different from those found in raw meat--it's herbivore muscle and it's going into omnivore digestive juices. Plus, once those enzymes hit the acid in your dog's stomach they're toast anyway. Your body is essentially made up of water, minerals, sugars, and protein. Enzymes are proteins and proteins are made of a chain of amino acids arranged in a specific order and in a specific way. Cooking food denatures the proteins. This means that they are broken up into smaller pieces-- the amino acids. The proteins in bacteria and parasites (hope those aren't in your food) are also denatured, so they die. Cooking does nothing to the actual amino acids (that make up the protein in your food). This is fine since your body needs to break proteins into amino acids anyway because the body can only absorb small amino acids- -not whole proteins. Once amino acids are absorbed, your body reforms them into whatever proteins it needs. In short this means that your body can only absorb the particles that make up proteins (and enzymes) not the whole molecule itself. Cooking breaks protein molecules down with heat in the same way that your body breaks them down with chemicals.

Another thing to consider is that dogs are omnivores just like people. We have similar needs as far as nutrients and I wonder how many of the people feeding BARF actually eat raw meat themselves. I know I don't chow down on uncooked hamburger and I'm planning to live for a long time. It's ridiculous to believe that you have to eat RAW proteins to get protein into your system. It's also very difficult to get the right balance of nutrients when feeding a diet like this. Adding a doggie vitamin that your vet or pet store can supply might help but why not just feed regular dog food. Companies have done testing to make sure that their dog food meets all of the nutrient requirements that a dog needs. There are a lot of varieties that are organic or natural or whatever you want. They're more expensive that regular dog food but so are meat and veggies. These foods are free of additives and preservatives etc. so they can meet the needs of picky consumers. Also, the dry dog food helps to keep their teeth clean. (Bones do this too.)

And finally there's the issue of germs. Obviously dogs can handle more bugs than humans--I'd probably die within the hour if I chewed on some of the nasty stuff my dog does. But food poisoning is still food poisoning. A dog isn't impervious to bacteria.

-- Erika (misserika129@hotmail.com), April 27, 2002.


great idea if you have the freezer room and the time some people can meat but that seems like somuch trouble the old timers cooked a mush of cornmeal and meat scraps for thier dogs just look at the ingreadients on the dog food bag most are almost all cerial products so you can streach that ewe with ground grains iv put lots of things in the freezer for the dogs just make shure the packages are marked well LOL . you wouldnt neeed to grind it into burger just chopp into chunks and cook it later with the grains the dogs will love it and you can charge yourself the value of the dogfood as a profit

-- george darby (gardenalways@yahoo.com), April 27, 2002.

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