Dog food. Who feeds raw and processes it themselves? Bones question (?)

Hello,

Does anyone feed their dogs raw ground elk or deer? What percentage of bone do you use and are som bones better than others?

Thanks

I feed mine deer and goat or whatever else I've hunted. I just cut off the bits I want and throw them the rest, usually just the one shoulder, bare ribs and spine. Why grind it? Four hunting dogs reduce most of a deer carcass to a couple of bones in 3 days without me helping at all and they love chewing on the bones.

I do when I can get it, but it's almost always freezerburned people-selections from last year (or a couple years ago's)'s deer rather than ground for dog consumption. I wouldn't grind unless you're feeding cats or quite small dogs. And I wouldn't feed spines or heads at all with either.

I feed raw deer an goat not ground. Also chicken, turkey, hog, squirrel, etc.  Sometimes it's around 50-50 bone to meat, then next couple feeding are mostly meat, fat, skin. I'm fairly new to the raw feeding, but have one that would be dead on feeding bag food, so I'm kind of sticking to the 15% bone, 15%organ meat, 70% meat per week I read bout... Nothing ground.

Thank you for the feedback. We have a boxer with an under-bite so ground is easier for her to eat. We currently feed her commercial raw that has a mix of meat, organ and bone. I would like to keep the bone % in anything I would grind myself. Just not sure what bones to use.

Short answer? Anything that fits in your grinder that isn't spine or skull. Weight-bearing bones are harder and may break your grinder.

I have a two year old Maremma and he eats mostly raw pork, chicken and rabbit.  When I finish butchering an animal, I set aside all of the "extras" for the dog.  Basically I give him a hand full of meat, a hand full of organs and a hand full of bone daily.   I would say that it's roughly 15% bone on most days.  Today he ate a whole pig foot, some pieces of lung and a decent size chunk of skin with fat.  He'll eat just about anything as long as it's bloody.  Sometimes he'll walk away with it to bury and dig up later.  I guess some pieces need to marinate in soil before he's into it.  

I have ground it up in the past but as it turns out, the dog is more than capable of doing that work for himself.  If you need to use a standard home grinder, I suggest not attempting anything larger than a turkey leg bone.  That's just about the limit for most home grinders.  Some of the larger "commercial" grinders will certainly do bigger bones than that, though I would probably save those bones for making soup stock.  When I make stock, I simmer it for a whole day, leaving the bones in an almost mushy state.  They just turn to mush by the time I've gotten all the goodness from them.  I mash the bones and then feed that with other food scraps to the poultry.  What they won't eat, the dog cleans up... sometimes.  I never feed him bones that have been roasted or baked  because they can splinter and hurt the dog's digestive system.  I almost always end up using those bones to make soup or broth anyway. Then they are all good to go to the birds as I mentioned before.  

I've fed raw for years to my cats and dogs. I aim for around 10% bone although it depends on their stools and how rich the rest of the meat is. I only get venison meat on rare occasion and then it's just organs and legs.
I just cut things with a knife for my small dog and older cat. I used to grind but none of them liked it hat way.