Calculating the Amount of Bone in my Recipe

[KelWhit]

Hello, I’ve been feeding a raw homemade diet for a year now but I’ve been questioning if my recipe is complete. I’m following Dr Piersons recipe (but raw not cooked). I’ve used the guideline to remove 20-25% of bone from the thigh. For the recipe example, if you have 10 thighs remove 2 bones.

But I’m wondering how you calculate how much bone is being used since a thigh bone is 15-21% of the thigh. In my simple thinking, if roughly 1/5th of the thigh is bone should I be removing 5 bones from 10 thighs? If I use the example above, just removing 2 bones, does that mean i’m leaving too much bone in my recipe? My boys pooh every other day and it is very dry and firm.

I could remove all the bones and weigh them and then do the calculation to get to 10% but that seems like a lot more work.

Does anyone have information or thoughts on how they calculate how much bone to add/remove?

I’ve seen others link to the raw&nerdy site and I will be doing the course and possibly getting the spreadsheet so I can better understand their nutritional requirements. Thank you for your thoughts.

 

[sophie1]

To get the best estimate of the bone fraction in your recipe, you will indeed have to pull out and weigh all the bones. That way you'll have the info for the thighs you're buying. I personally would take out half the bones, because I know my cats can't tolerate more than 7% bone.

The question is really whether your cats' poop is truly abnormal. Dry, hard, small poops are normal for raw-fed cats. There's photos on Dr. Pierson's website showing what normal poop should look like. If the poops are whitish, then definitely there's too much bone. If your cats show signs of constipation, bone could be the culprit there too.

Talking to your veterinarian can be helpful, as long as it's one who is open to raw diets.

 

[KelWhit]

Thank you for your feedback. Their poop is firm and dry but i’ve never seen it white. And they are pretty consistent with going every other day, sometimes a few days in a row. I’m always worried because they aren’t drinking water, just what I add to their food when I’m warming it. I’ll try to remove the bone and weigh it out next grind just to calculate but it’s a daunting task to do it every time.