I just ground up a whole raw chicken - Page 1

In my Vitamix Blender!  I love this blender. 

I did switch back to raw this week after that debacle with Royal Canin last week.  Today I saw whole chickens on sale for $.88 a pound, which is not a bad price, I do see them lower at Costco, but for experimental purposes I bought one today. 

I of course cut the breast out for my dinner tomorrow, and since I have these two pups decided to grind up the whole thing and see if the blender really would grind chicken bones.  I tried beef bones once, that broke it  but when I called to get the piece to fix it, the lady told me chicken bones would be no problem.  So I cut it into 6 sections, pulled off most of the fat, and ground it up!  I had a big bowl of chicken mush including the organs that it comes with!

Just thought I would share incase there are some other people that are concerned with feeding the leg and thigh bones of chicken, the Vitamix is an awesome blender!!  It take me about 15 mintues to do the whole thing.

Kari LOL! I have been doing it for a long time with a Tasin meat grinder. I doubt it would do beef bones either, but I did do a turkey once. The chickens I grind are stewers, so scrawy little suckers. How'd the pups like it? I use the bigger disc in my grinder and it looks like ground chuck.

Hmmmm  I may have to look into a meat grinder.  All of this salmonella talk had me washing my blender 5 times and still putting it in the dishwasher!!

The pups loved it as did my own dogs, they got eggs for dinner too.

KariM - just remember dogs have different acid load in the stomach and differnt bacteria in their gut and deal very well with raw food - thats what nature intended them to eat, after all they cant turn the cooker on.

My guy's love raw chicken, be it thigh, leg or any part they can get their teeth on - means I have to watch my live ones!

As for the washing - to remove any traces from equiment all you have to do is use scalding hot water with detergent and its gone.

Don't you worry about bone splinters? Just curious.

SS

The only time you should worry about bone splintering is when it is cooked.  Dogs come with the equipment to deal with raw bones and mine have had chicken portions most of their lives and 2 have even been weaned onto chicken and have had legs and wings from such an early age.  I prefer to give whole portions to the dogs as they then chew it rather than minced which they just seem to gulp down.

Have no concern over chicken bones.  Dogs eat them just fine.  Whole foods are better than ground foods for the dogs.  Ground gets stuck in their teeth.  Whole cleans their teeth.

When I fed Blitz raw chicken wings, he vomited the bones and trust me, they were very splintered and sharp. That did not give me a warm, fuzzy feeling about feeding raw chicken wings.  He did better with chicken backs and turkey wings.

Shelly its the reason I grind my chicken, old adage about chicken bones die hard here. If I feel the ground food it feels like hamburger I can't feel the bones for the most part, maybe one once in awhile but it is small.

Gunnar my dogs teeth are very white and clean and white, even my almost 11 year old. I do give hunks of elk/deer so maybe that is why it isn't stuck in their teeth. But I don't think so because they seem to always eat the red meat first and sort of wolf it, not chew it.

Kari I found my meat grinder on ebay, it was around $100.00. I like it because you just disassemble the part with the throat and it cleans up really nice.

I have several people that feed raw and they still suggest to stay away from weight bearing bones even in chickens.

I also have a friend who only feeds chicken quarters, and has had no problems.

I was just happy to use my Vitamix and chop up a whole chicken!!