Any Ideas on grinding hard bones - Page 4

Best suggestion I have for you, Paul, with that many dogs is to go to a chicken processor and buy fresh chicken backs. Buying from them , the backs will not be trimmed like they are at the grocery store. A lot of fat sill on them and meat ...each back where we were buying them weight about a pound apiece. Get a Weston 32 grinder and it wil make short work of a whole back that size. I could go through five fourty pound boxes of backs in a couple hours. Grind it into zip locks and freeze it. That's the safest and those backs even still have organ meat in them.

I will look for a poultry processor good idea. I already have a good meat grinder I can grind about 500 lbs of beef an hour. I bet I could mix beef and chicken. I can grind and bag at the same time. we already grind a lot of red meat.

Joan
How much do you pay per pound

Paul, clearly WE are all here because WE are not all there. Saturday night used to be for partying. now....................

It's fifty cents a pound now, or twenty dollars for a forty pound box. The price has doubled in the past few years, price of corn. When I fed the backs to my huskies, it was twenty cents a pound. You can get frames too, but don't like them because not enough meat left on them and the necks on them. Chicken necks and wings are the hardest bones on a bird...even these baby chickens that are only nine weeks old, the neck bones are way too hard. When i fed frames, one of my females developed an abcess on her throat. I kept feeling something hard in the tissue, and every day tried to squeeze it. Finally, it popped open, and a piece of chicken neck bone came out the hole. Lucky she was on antibiotics. My vet was floored. That was when I started grinding the bones. But don't waste time with frames, unless you have lot of meat to add. Frames are same price, but no kidneys, testicles, fat and meat like with the backs.

Right now I can get leg quarters for .59 at walmart. I can get downers (beef) nearly free. That is why I would like to grind beef bones.

You women have always been a bad influence on me. LOL I like to go to bed by 8:30 or 9:00 cuz I will be awake by 4:00 am

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise

Joanro:  here I thought weight bearing bones were the hardest bones to breakup;  now you tell me neck and wing bones are the hardest part of the bird;  I quit using leg quarters as I was finding large pieces of leg/thigh bones in the yard when cleaning up, think someone barfed them up;  I also found beef rib bone whole that came out in someones stool, know which one that was.  So the leg quarters did not work for my older dogs (which are now gone) but just became concerned about dogs that devour without chewing well. 

So thank you for sharing that about the chicken necks/wings, am going to try to find backs or maybe buy whole chickens and cut all up??  Not real keen on that, but we will see, maybe...

I buy thigh meat although it is skinned; human grade at Smart & Final (like a restaurant warehouse grocery outlet) boned, 40lbs for about 60.00 so my guys could have more meat less bone ratio than leg quarters.  So far, has worked OK.  Also same store has brisket for about $2.35/lb.  I bring that home has a fair amount of fat on it though and cut to inch or so strips and freeze;  good for ripping and tearing;  also buy london broil when cheap and do same.  Seems like a lot of shopping and hauling though, glad hub's is willing to do shopping for me though, really helpful.  Not sure what kind of deals you could get at Costco, or if they would grind for you??  Or Sam's Club which we no longer have here, went out of business...  Walmart got too big.  Bye for now.  Nan

Nan, long bones are dangerous with dog that crunch twice and swallow. I, too found long shards of leg and thigh bones in stools of dogs that practically eat them whole. Beef rib bones, unless from a baby animal (I won't even feed ribs from deer or goats, too thin and easy to swallow whole) will splinter. Too, many times I've had close calls with bones, and a friend had an adult male mini bull choke to death on a chicken wing (if I remember correctly, it was a wing) the neck is exercised the most in a bird, so will have hardest bones....the wings are supposed to be weight bearing for flight...the backs and legs of the baby chickens are soft, buth those long bones can spouted and don't have time to digest because there is so much meat on the leg quarter, it goes throughout the tract too fast, along with the quickly digested meat.
I feed Nature's Domain, Salmon and Sweet Potatoe. My dogs are healthy and still get BIG end of long bones (knuckle bones) with meat on them. I keep an eye on them, when the bone is chewed down small enough to swallow, I throw it away.