raw feeding 4 dogs - advice pls?

Fosterdog

What size chest freezer is it? Mine is a 148l one and I did my monthly shop for my two on Friday, it has roughly 35kg of meat, 12kg bones and carcasses, 5kg offal and some extra bits and it is crammed to the top, even had to put a few bits in my other freezer to make it all fit.

For 65kg of meat you'll need at least a 200l freezer maybe bigger depending on what meat you ordered.

Some pet minces come in very convenient sized packages and they can be easily stacked and crammed in but chunks and whole prey are a nightmare to fit in.

krlyr

Mine's a 98 litre undercounter freezer and I can squeeze about 65lb/30kg if I pack it carefully. So I agree with the 200l freezer estimation - chest freezers tend to be a bit more economical on space too, having the limitation of drawers means odd shaped pieces don't fit so well and you end up with a bit more wasted space per drawer.

However, if it doesn't all fit, it's not the end of the world. She'll get through a few kg a day, and if it arrives frozen it will stay frozen for a few days if packed carefully. Pack the excess in cool boxes or similar (I have some polystyrene boxes I nabbed off a colleague who orders from Nutriment, they courier in poly boxes) to prolong how long they'll stay frozen for.

Also, with raw for dogs, you're able to re-freeze if things partially defrost. Ideally they should stay below room temperature - so rotate the stuff outside of the freezer with some frozen blocks, which will buy a few more days. Even when it's fully defrosted, it should keep in the fridge a couple of days.

I've had a couple of times I've overestimated the spare room in my freezer, as you may have guessed!

Fosterdog

It is the awkward bits taking up more room in my freezer, I've got a whole rack of pig ribs yet to be split, 15 chicken carcasses, 4 pheasant carcasses and some chunky lamb back bones. They take up around half the freezer just with the awkward shapes then the actual meat stacks neatly and I get a lot more in.

I do have an undercounter freezer in the house too and tend to bring a weeks worth in from the shed at a time, I would be able to fit a lot more in it but I pre-prepare the meals into tubs so OH can also do the feeding. The tubs take up quite a bit of room. I have taken the draws out of the freezer and just use the shelves they sat on to get a bit of extra space.

When I started raw feeding 9 months ago the dogs just had one draw and one shelf in my fridge freezer and I only got a weeks worth at a time and used a cooler box for the overflow. Then I brought my old/spare undercounter freezer in from the shed for them, then I added the chest freezer (really wanted the bigger one but wouldn't fit through the shed door) and now I'm already looking to add either a second undercounter or replace the existing one with a tall freezer, eventually I want a second chest freezer too.

My main reasons for wanting all of the extra space is that I can keep more pre-prepared meals in the house so don't have to prepare it all as often or spend cold wet winter nights running up to the shed and I can buy more in bulk when things are on offer and store it for a month or two without their meals getting repetitive.

gettingready

Thanks again. I believe this is the one Ewa bought - 205 litres...

http://ao.com/product/mcf205-fridgemaster-chest-freezer-white-27940-33.aspx


The food she ordered for the first time is the pre-packaged one in blocks of 454 gram so I hope it will all fit....

krlyr

Fosterdog wrote: »

I do have an undercounter freezer in the house too and tend to bring a weeks worth in from the shed at a time, I would be able to fit a lot more in it but I pre-prepare the meals into tubs so OH can also do the feeding. The tubs take up quite a bit of room. I have taken the draws out of the freezer and just use the shelves they sat on to get a bit of extra space.

Yes, this is kind of my plan too. Chest freezer in shed outside the back door, with the undercounter inside (maybe just the one drawer though, we could do with more space for our own stuff)

I don't generally pre-prepare meals but have done on a few occasions (usually because I'm going away - with the dogs to make things easier/fit more in the holiday cottage's freezer, or without the dogs and making things easier for OH). I use the plastic takeaway tubs to prep the meals, but then pop the blocks out of the tubs to increase how many I can store. Could be worth considering - if I need to defrost then I pop back in the empty tub, though a lot of the time I just feed it frozen.

Only real downside is that if your freezer were to die, you might end up with a drawer of mushy meat! I did stick the blocks inside sandwich bags when I took the blocks down in the car to our holiday cottage, just incase they defrosted on the way down though (but they were fine thanks to the poly box)

I can fit about 40ish blocks on their own per drawer, vs only about 20 in their tubs.

krlyr

gettingready wrote: »

Thanks again. I believe this is the one Ewa bought - 205 litres...

http://ao.com/product/mcf205-fridgemaster-chest-freezer-white-27940-33.aspx


The food she ordered for the first time is the pre-packaged one in blocks of 454 gram so I hope it will all fit....

I think she should be fine. I get one in 454g blocks, the only thing I would say is if they're slightly defrosted on arrival, be careful how she packs them in the freezer. If the edge of one curls around another, they can get a bit locked together, and condensation on the outside of the bags can stick together. Easily fixed by dropping the block of them onto a concrete floor, but hard to remove from a chest freezer if you've got 50 blocks stuck together! I'd suggest she maybe uses some carrier bags to freeze them in smaller groups (and this makes it easy to get to the bottom of the freezer too - removing 5 carrier bags instead of 60 individual blocks!)

gettingready

Some great advise here, will ask Ewa to look on the thread for inspiration.

Thanks again xx

gettingready

Can anyone recommend a knife to cut trough frozen meat packs to divide them into correct weight pls?
Ewa needs to weight it up between 5 dogs, she is aiming for 2% of ideal body weight so 454 gram packs need to be divided.... Thanks a lot

GwylimT

gettingready wrote: »

Can anyone recommend a knife to cut trough frozen meat packs to divide them into correct weight pls?
Ewa needs to weight it up between 5 dogs, she is aiming for 2% of ideal body weight so 454 gram packs need to be divided.... Thanks a lot

I used an old wooden handle cheese knife I regularly sharpen and a hammer. I used to use a cleaver and lean on it, but it had to be fairly soft, with the hammer and cheese knife it barely needs any defrosting.

sheramber

We need to split packs but we defrost the packs in the fridge over night , dish up what is needed and put any extra back in the fridge for the next day.

When the dogs go into kennels we prepack their meals for the keenls.

My husband prefers to do that with frozen blocks as he tended to forget he had left the meat defrosting.
He uses a heavy serated kitchen knife and wears the strong black rubber gloves from Tesco to protect his hands form cold and accidents,

It is not at all easy to cut through a frozen block.

You can also let it partly defrost to cut it and then refreeze if necessary.

Dogs have strong stomachs- look at the dead carcasses they will scoff given the chance- so don't worry about refreezing partly defrosted stuff. However, as I said, we just out the extra in the fridge for use the next day.

You will find it gets easier as you go along and develop your own way of doing things.