Posted on 11/30/2009 5:46:23 AM PST by savedbygrace
Someone has given us a lot of ground deer meat. I'm storing it in the freezer, of course.
I'd like to feed some of it to our Golden Retriever with his regular kibble.
Is it necessary to cook it, or would it be safe to feed it to him raw? We've fed BilJac raw meat to our dogs in the past, so I'm thinking raw is OK.
They NEED that dead fish to roll around in to make their hair so smooth and silky and get rid of that doggie shampoo smell!
lol.
Au contraire! The wolf is a “natural animal.” Dogs have co-habitated with humans for so long, they’ve lost their lupine traits. They are so used to humans as masters, that they no longer psychologically mature, being incapable of true alpha-male roles. They have adapted their digestive systems to leftovers. They have developed cognitive capabilities seen nowhere else in the animal world, such as object permanence. Their language skills are unrivaled among mammals, even by apes and dolphins.
My dogs seem to need it as well! I have a vet friend who talks about the ‘Tootsie Roll dig’ that her dogs will do in the cat box if she didn’t keep it away from them. And my dogs are forever crunching on something they find around the trashcans. If they don’t eat it, they at least want to roll in it.
OH, my old black Lab brought home a deer leg once. Whew, what a stink! Pretty bad to walk out the door at 6am and find that laying on the walkway!
We give our dog the deer bones, which have some meat left on them. They can handle it just fine. In fact, there’s something called a “BARF diet,” a healthy home-prepared diet for dogs and cats that includes raw meat.
Just think about what they eat in the wild.
Or you could cook it up and eat it yourself. Thyme and sage kill the gamey flavor. Check some recipies on the Internet, you’ll love the results.
Yeah...those border collies are the smartest dogs in the world but they also are wacky! Gotta love them!
I still would never eat venison, unless it was very well done.
Cook the meat to 130 degrees F (140 is better) and the trichinella will die and cannot cause harm.
By the way, raw beef is OK, but pork is not (it should be cooked just as the deer meat should).
Regards.
Sure you can. Deer in the morning deer in the evening and deer in the afternoon. LOL!!! 24/7 deer.
Our dogs will find, drag up and consume at least two deer carcases each winter. Raw venison, won't make them sick but we have a heck of a time keeping the intestinal worms at bay, both round and tape worm infestations, which I believe is from eating the deer.
I would say the problem isn’t with the meat, but with the dog. When you change a dog’s diet to something they aren’t used to, it can sometimes make them sick. The best advice would be to first, ask your veterinarian, just to be on the safe side, then if they say it is okay, to introduce the meat a little at a time, watching for any vomiting or diarrhea.
Personally, I’d still cook it. The best bet would be to pressure cook it for 10 minutes. That would almost guarantee that any bad thing in it was killed. The zinger is that it is much, much harder to kill a prion disease (like a deer wasting disease) than it is other pathogens:
“For prion elimination, various recommendations state 121–132 °C (250–270 °F) for 60 minutes or 134 °C (273 °F) for at least 18 minutes. The prion that causes the disease scrapie is inactivated relatively quickly by such sterilization procedures; however, other strains of scrapie, as well as strains of CJD and BSE are more resistant.”
Lucky Dogs
>>>I can’t eat all of it in the next 12 months, which is about the longest meat for people should be frozen, and I certainly don’t want it to be wasted<<<
Can it! Keeps for years and years - Taste is fantastic!
I process about 2-3 deer a year - Bones (uncooked) to our three dogs, freeze butterfly steaks, ground venison, make absolutely fantastic sausage, freeze roasts and some steaks and then about half of it gets put in jars and pressure canned as venison chunks and ground. Every year during September, I clean out the freezer and can whatever we won’t be eating before deer season.
Stews, soups, casseroles, chili - easy and quick from canned. If you absolutely have to feed some to the dog, use canned that is several years old. I figure canned that is 6-7 years old before dogs would get it.
Don’t forget the occaissional filled baby diaper. They seem to relish the treat.
An ealier post mentioned it. If the meat is infected with the prions that cause CWD, cooking won't kill them. More information here: http://www.cwd-info.org/index.php/fuseaction/about.main
FYI Joya;
"I can’t eat all of it in the next 12 months, which is about the longest meat for people should be frozen..."
I've personally never heard this and have had frozen meat for over two years that tastes every bit as good as any other frozen meat that has hung around for a lot less time. If you properly vacuum pack the meat it will stay fine for more than a year... If I got that much Venison from someone, I'd grind it up with some pork or perhaps some sirloin and make some good eatin'!
I feed my dog raw meat that’s been sitting in the fridge a little too long all the time. She’s turning 14 this spring. She’s never gotten sick from it and actually *stopped* her chronic vomiting and diarrhea when I started doing this. She gets about two to four pounds a month.
(On hot summer days, I’ll get out a pound of frozen meat and let her gnaw on it for half an hour or so. She loves her “meatsickles”!)
As with any diet change, I’d do it gradually. Start with 1/4-1/2 a pound, wait a few days, then give the pooch a bit more. Raw meat is great for dogs.
Oh, but don’t forget to de-worm your dog every three months. (Should be done anyway, but it’s especially important when they eat raw game meat.)
If you live in Texas, we could use the meat! (No hunting for us this year. My son got in trouble and that's his punishment. I hate it.)
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