It's a substantial looking unit. The pictures do not do it justice.

We don't have the right foods yet for full scale RMB grinding but have local
sources for them. Snow everywhere just now melting off since Xmas day and
most spots where you'd get cheap pet grindable foods closed today and
tomorrow. So today, we filter the chest freezer to make room for it all
then later we make sausage (for the 2foots in the house) to get used to the
machine.

I may have some frozen chicken though in the freezer that can be defrosted
and ground. No organ meats but it's ok if a meal or two isn't balanced
totally.

On Sat, 1 Jan 2011 14:16:36 -0500, "cshenk" wrote:

It's a substantial looking unit. The pictures do not do it justice.

We don't have the right foods yet for full scale RMB grinding but have local
sources for them. Snow everywhere just now melting off since Xmas day and
most spots where you'd get cheap pet grindable foods closed today and
tomorrow. So today, we filter the chest freezer to make room for it all
then later we make sausage (for the 2foots in the house) to get used to the
machine.

I may have some frozen chicken though in the freezer that can be defrosted
and ground. No organ meats but it's ok if a meal or two isn't balanced
totally.

Organ meat should only make up about 10% of a dog's diet, so if you're
not feeding totally raw, I wouldn't worry about organs at this point.
Also, chicken backs typically have some organ meat attached (I like to
call 'em kidney bits). So if you're just doing raw on a supplemental
basis, or even for people beginning an all-raw diet, you don't need to
worry about organ meats with the first meals.

"sighthounds & siberians" wrote
"cshenk" wrote:

It's a substantial looking unit. The pictures do not do it justice.
We don't have the right foods yet for full scale RMB grinding but have
local
sources for them. Snow everywhere just now melting off since Xmas day and
most spots where you'd get cheap pet grindable foods closed today and
tomorrow. So today, we filter the chest freezer to make room for it all
then later we make sausage (for the 2foots in the house) to get used to
the
machine.

I may have some frozen chicken though in the freezer that can be defrosted
and ground. No organ meats but it's ok if a meal or two isn't balanced
totally.

Organ meat should only make up about 10% of a dog's diet, so if you're
not feeding totally raw, I wouldn't worry about organs at this point.
Also, chicken backs typically have some organ meat attached (I like to
call 'em kidney bits). So if you're just doing raw on a supplemental
basis, or even for people beginning an all-raw diet, you don't need to
worry about organ meats with the first meals.

Thats what we figured too. We already suppliment raw but ran out of stuff
for that over the past week and snow storms hit. Monday I have to get Mabel
Anne to her first vet trip with her new vet and get her insurance and all
that. Tuesday I hope to get some cases of chicken necks, backs, and whole
legs.

For now, the pork butt test 7lb piece is almost defrosted enough. We will
use some of it to feed them the 'wet added to dry BW kibble' probably
tonight. The only other options here are frozen raw cod (Cash doesnt like
it that much, not tested on Mabel Anne), a milk fish (frozen rock hard just
now and not something I'd grind but chopped to steaks both like it), and
some cleaned squid turned to rings (frozen, they both like it as a treat).

The rest in the freezer, is kept for us 2 foots as either unsuitable, or
just too good for them (fresh frozen ham is MINE I tells ya! So are the
tbones that cost me 14.99lb!).

Most of my chest freezer is empty just now or it's veggies, rice in bags,
grains/flours for breadmaking etc. I have room easily for 80lbs RMB,
possibly 120lbs even with that in there.

"sighthounds & siberians" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 1 Jan 2011 14:16:36 -0500, "cshenk" wrote:

It's a substantial looking unit. The pictures do not do it justice.

We don't have the right foods yet for full scale RMB grinding but have
local
sources for them. Snow everywhere just now melting off since Xmas day and
most spots where you'd get cheap pet grindable foods closed today and
tomorrow. So today, we filter the chest freezer to make room for it all
then later we make sausage (for the 2foots in the house) to get used to
the
machine.

I may have some frozen chicken though in the freezer that can be defrosted
and ground. No organ meats but it's ok if a meal or two isn't balanced
totally.

Organ meat should only make up about 10% of a dog's diet, so if you're
not feeding totally raw, I wouldn't worry about organs at this point.
Also, chicken backs typically have some organ meat attached (I like to
call 'em kidney bits). So if you're just doing raw on a supplemental
basis, or even for people beginning an all-raw diet, you don't need to
worry about organ meats with the first meals.

"sighthounds & siberians" wrote

It's a substantial looking unit. The pictures do not do it justice.

Organ meat should only make up about 10% of a dog's diet, so if you're
not feeding totally raw, I wouldn't worry about organs at this point.
Also, chicken backs typically have some organ meat attached (I like to
call 'em kidney bits). So if you're just doing raw on a supplemental
basis, or even for people beginning an all-raw diet, you don't need to
worry about organ meats with the first meals.

Just got back from the store 3 hours ago and we started. As we worked
along, we figured out the unit works best with some meat added although it
handles smaller chicken necks alone very well. For backs, we started adding
thigh meats and leg quarter meats and that worked better.

We processed 5 lbs of chicken necks just right from the box (skin on and
all) in 10 minutes and if there was a slow down, it was us bagging and
tagging stuff. We did another 2lb of backs mixed with 40 lbs leg quarter
meats cut off the bone (saving the leg bones for stock in the crockpot and
tried raw bone for the first time there). The cutting the leg bones off the
meat down slowed us a bit but we just left the harder to get at stuff on the
bone. We added 1 lb pork liver, 1 lb kidney (lamb) and 2 lbs beef heart.

I don't know if the machine will handle a leg bone and we decided for now to
not try that. I also didn't roast the bones before adding to the crockpot
so this will be a little different, more like a chicken soup made with fresh
chicken and bone-on.

The batch is a bit bone high. 7lbs bone mostly to 43lbs meat. 51 lbs, done
in about 2 hours and we are no experts at this so probably slower. Neighbor
comes over shortly and gets 25lbs of the 51.

I have 15lbs of chicken necks (now bagged roughly to 5 lb amounts) and 18lbs
of chicken backs (rebagged to about 1 lb each) plus another 40lb case of leg
quarters (rebagged to about 5 lbs each). 2 beef hearts, and some other
bits. The rebagging took about 30 mins.

My initial view is yes, it takes longer and it costs a little more than BW
kibble, but in 2 hours we handled 51lbs and we have an easy to defrost and
grind second set.