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Chicken thighs
How many do you give per meal?
Luna has been getting 1 thigh plus some fruits and veggies. She's 55 pounds or so but needs to put on a few more, she's little skinny for my liking.
They are good size thighs, Perdue brand or so. The really good company that is Certified Humane has teeny tiny little thighs. My local grocery store has them on sale for 99c a pound for thighs and drumsticks this week so I am ready to buy about 15 family packs! LOL
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If she is skinny, you should feed her more. :)
Really though, you should weigh them. If she is 55 lbs, she would get approximately 2% of her weight (it varies, but this is about average) so a little over one lb per day (not per meal). If you want her to gain wait, you can start by adding about a quarter of a lb more per day, see how that works, and if she's not putting on the weight after a week or so, add another quarter of a lb. You could add more meat to her ration like ground green tripe, pork, chicken breast, heart, a whole egg, whatever you can get your hands on that's in your price range. And don't forget to add some liver on occasion -- they really need it. You can also add some coconut oil -- slowly -- for extra calories if she needs it but cannot eat much in one meal.
I don't weigh the food anymore, but when I did it gave me a way to be able to eyeball "so, this is what a lb of this looks like", etc. Now I feed less if they look chunky and more if they look thin or the same if they are just right.
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One + some liver or gizzards, and some veggies.
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I don't do veggies, but I keep other things around, so I would weigh out the amount. I will give my guys 10 oz. of raw for one meal. So I would do one thigh, and then add in enough meat and maybe some organ until I hit 10 ounces. I buy bulk items from our co-op, so I have pork heart cubed in the freezer, and my husband works for a Bison rancher and in the process of making jerky etc. he has "extras" that he'll bring home. I prefer wings or necks though, so I usually buy 40# of chicken necks and break it down into manageable zip locs, and they'll get like 5 necks (they are small, like middle finger size) and then plain muscle meat.
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Excellent advice, I will put it on the scale and see. I am still very new to raw so trying to work out the kinks. She will be getting organs too but I have read to stick to one solid thing like chicken backs or breasts for the first few weeks then add in organs, right?
I have to say she's only been on raw for 3 days so not sure yet if 1 thigh is enough for her.
She is EXTREMELY active, so its really hard to put weight on her... thinking about adding in lunch again like when she was a wee pup.
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Depends on the size, I feed 8-10oz per meal. However I would probably only feed one thigh, and then add something boneless if I needed more to make it meal sized. That also depends on the dog though, mine don't need the bone content of two thighs in one meal.
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Mine can't handle the bone of 2 thighs in one meal. LOL I've had a dog swallow the whole piece and later on puke up a clean whole bone. Not pretty.
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Creek is a very skinny pup too; and I mean she's VERY boney. However, she doesn't handle much bone at all and does not like her chicken raw ;)
So she gets half homecooked (chicken, no bones); and will eat raw red meat - that's where I mix in ground beef, beef heart and calf liver. Not always the same day, but she does eat 3 meals a day; and at 47lbs and extremely active, she's eating 3lbs of food a day.
She also eats a ton of veggies, and we've started including oatmeal, seems to hold her better then brown rice. With brown rice, she would have the empty tummy crud as she would first get up in the morning, even with a few treats before bed.
I'm not sure I'm a fan of meat with whole bones in it; seen too many negative reactions.....both my dogs eat raw, but the bones are ground up. Rivers only needs bone maybe twice a week; he gets backed up real easy.
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No advice on the amount because I only have experience with feeding a dachshund raw and a single drumstick was more than enough food for a day but I wanted to mention that you should check that the chicken does not have sodium added. Sometimes companies like Perdue inject the chicken with sodium to enhance the flavor.
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I weigh them. Chicken thighs can really vary in size. Some are so small it takes two to make up the half pound meat component of each of Oban's meals. Well I aim for half a pound, rarely hit it right on.