I Need A Recipe Alteration

[lalagimp]

I am missing 1 pound of ground rabbit when it comes to the batch I'll have to make in September.

My math says
7 oz of chicken neck
11.5 oz of boneless chicken needed
3-4 ounces liver
1 teaspoon lite salt

This just took me about a half hour to work the numbers and check my resources.
Is there some huge red flag I'm not seeing?

 

[mschauer]

I'm not sure what you are asking. There are so many methods of formulating a raw diet I don't know which one you are following and so what it is you are trying to achieve. If you are trying to work out how much meat and liver you need to balance the chicken necks I have a calculator you might find useful at www.rawcalc.org.

Below are the results when using 7 oz of chicken neck. It doesn't matter if you enter the amount of necks in oz instead of lbs since the calculations are based on percentages. So if you want 10% bone and 10% organs you would need 15.68 oz of meat and 2.52 oz of liver.

 

[orange&white]

Are you using chicken necks with or without skin?

Bone content:
Chicken Neck without skin: 36%
Chicken Neck with skin: 25%

I think I remember you saying you're shooting for less than 10% bone (?) and a fairly high fat content after your consultation with Dr. Pierson. I don't think we have enough info to assess your mix.

 

[lalagimp]

Well I do less than 10% with the addition of boneless meat, but I'm trying to do a sub on one pound of ground rabbit, because I'm not changing the amount of boneless turkey I use. I saw the rabbit was 15% bone which should be 2.4 oz of the total pound, which looks like that number would be achieved with appx 7 oz of chicken necks, which still contain a percentage of meat, then adding the boneless chicken I would be using, so I came up with 11.5 oz chicken, and then "if you're not using rabbit" add 3-4 oz of liver and use 1 tsp lite salt.
I honestly have no idea if the necks have skin or not because I purchased them from Hare Today on the last order and I haven't ever thawed them out.

I'm out 1 pound of rabbit. I am trying to reproduce 1 pound of rabbit using necks and boneless poultry and the stuff it's missing - addition of liver to "3 lbs of poultry" and 1 tsp lite salt because I don't have the rabbit with the thyroid.

Not trying to change the composition of the entire batch, just trying to make this 6th of 18 lbs to be complete. I'm still going to do the same amounts of B,E, taurine and fish oil to the entire thing, not adjusting overall bone content -
Just want to fake 1 pound of missing rabbit.

 

[orange&white]

Oh, I see. Hare Today's description for the chicken necks is that they are skinless, so you've got a 36% bone content product.

Hare Today has a lot of rabbit products, but the dressed ground rabbit reads 75% meat 15% bone 10% organ [liver, pancreas, kidney]. Is that the rabbit you usually buy or another of their rabbit products? (Also, I thought that ground dressed rabbit, which includes the head, was closer to 28% bone...but Tracy's site is showing 15%.)

For one batch, I'm not sure how precise you need to be, if this substitution is only 16% of your total batch.

 

[mschauer]

Are you using chicken necks with or without skin?

Bone content:
Chicken Neck without skin: 36%
Chicken Neck with skin: 25%

According to USDA data a raw chicken neck is 36% bone, 39% skin and separable fat leaving 25% meat. That would make a neck minus the skin and fat 59% bone.

 

[lalagimp]

Product | Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow

Product | Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow

My stepcat has refused to get the flurf off my lap and I just got my laptop back.

 

[mschauer]

If using the USDA data, skinless chicken necks are 59% bone and 41% meat so to create an approx 1 lb mix using skinless chicken necks to achieve 15% bone and 10% organs:

Does that answer your question? To clarify, that's 4 oz skinless chicken necks, 10.16 oz other meat and 1.57 oz organs of your choice. Your totals would be 2.36 oz bone, 11.8 oz meat and 1.57 oz organs.

 

[mschauer]

Product | Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow

For their chicken necks they show bone and meat (actually meat plus skin) percentages for skin on necks but their picture shows skinless necks. I'd call them and ask whether the necks have skin or not. Their description says skinless so I'd assume that. But the percentages they show are incorrect.

Look at a skinless chicken neck. Do you really believe it is 64% meat? That would be slightly more than what a boneless chicken thigh has.

 

[orange&white]

To match one pound of chicken neck mix to the 75/15/10 rabbit mix (with the bone ratio %'ages listed on Tracy's site).

You want:
6.65 oz skinless chicken necks (2.4 bone, 4.2 meat)
7.75 oz additional boneless
1.60 oz organ meat
______
=16 oz

That would give you one pound of 75/15/10 substitute (assumes Tracy's numbers listed at Hare Today that the skinless necks are 36% bone/64%meat).

 

[lalagimp]

Look at a skinless chicken neck. Do you really believe it is 64% meat?

Point taken.

 

[orange&white]

I occasionally break thighs and weigh the skin, meat and bone separately. With boneless thighs, I usually end up with 12% bone and 88% meat.

It's not inconceivable that a "boney" neck would be only 3x the bone, especially considering that in a raw diet, all the cartilage and sinew count as "meat" not bone, though we humans wouldn't want to be eating all the cartilage sandwiched between the vertebrae in a chicken neck as we would not consider those bits as "meat".

Anyway, whether you use a minuscule 36% or a whopping 59% in your calculation....and this pound of meat substitute is only going to be 1/6th of your mix...then you not going to have a significant difference in your ratios at the end of the batch.

 

[mschauer]

It's not inconceivable that a "boney" neck would be only 3x the bone, especially considering that in a raw diet, all the cartilage and sinew count as "meat" not bone, though we humans wouldn't want to be eating all the cartilage sandwiched between the vertebrae in a chicken neck as we would not consider those bits as "meat".

You will never convince me that a skinless chicken neck is anywhere near 64% meat.

I think it is pretty clear what mistake HT has made. They looked at the USDA data stating that chicken necks are 36% bone, 39% skin and separable fat and 25% muscle meat and said that means a chicken thigh is 36% bone and 64% meat (with 'meat' including the skin). That would be correct for a skin on neck. When they wanted the percent of just meat they just took the 64% forgetting that it includes skin. I've seen it happen before.

 

[mschauer]

I occasionally break thighs and weigh the skin, meat and bone separately. With boneless thighs, I usually end up with 12% bone and 88% meat.

Your chicken thighs must have very little of the naturally occurring skin on them after processing. Years ago I bought multiple packages of bone-in, skin on chicken thighs and carefully separated the bone, meat and skin. I came up with pretty close to the USDA data of 15% bone, 25% fat and skin and 60% meat. I didn't include the thighs where much of the skin was obviously missing however.

Edit: I've tracked down how HT made their mistake. On their web page for the skinless necks there is an 'Analysis' tab that contains this link : Chicken, broilers or fryers, neck, meat and skin, raw Nutrition Facts & Calories. If you go to that link and look at the bottom you see the data comes from the USDA database (version 21) and is from the entry for "Chicken, broilers or fryers, neck, meat and skin, raw". Then if you go to the USDA database and lookup that entry and click on show full report, you'll see it says the item is 36% bone but says nothing about skin and fat. They mistakenly thought the remaining 64% must be meat.

 

[orange&white]

I always get approx. 71% meat, 18-19% skin, 9-11% bone when I break down a package of thighs with skin.

Different breeds of chicken would have different ratios, and/or different producers make the cuts differently on packaged thighs. I know my store cheats a bit...there's always skin wrapped around the entire thigh...which is more skin than if I process my own whole birds. Anyway, there are several ways the numbers could have quite a margin of variability.

Bone content is always "iffy" in raw feeding, because there is too much wiggle room for any number to be the "right one". You just have to pick a number as your "base", see if your cats do well, and make adjustments as necessary.

 

[mschauer]

Bone content is always "iffy" in raw feeding, because there is too much wiggle room for any number to be the "right one". You just have to pick a number as your "base", see if your cats do well, and make adjustments as necessary.

Sure but you don't want to use bone data that is obviously wrong when doing your calculations. That could result in a cat known to get constipated on diet with bone greater than some target to suffer needlessly.

 

[orange&white]

Agreed. But my point is that no data we've discussed here is "obviously" wrong. Plus, this isn't the entire mix that lalagimp is making; it's only 16% of a larger batch.

Most recommendations for bone content are 5%-15%, with 10% being a targeted average. That range allows for a lot of choice when deciding which data to use as the starting point.

 

[mschauer]

Agreed. But my point is that no data we've discussed here is "obviously" wrong.

Ah, well there we disagree. I'm in contact with Tracey at HT. Ill let you know what she says. So far she has confirmed she used data from the usda database.

 

[orange&white]

I've found "obviously wrong" data in the government nutrition database. I'm aware that the US data is your only trusted source. I don't find it 100% reliable and trustworthy.

As independent analysts, it's fine to disagree on "the best" data.

 

[mschauer]

I'm attempting to show how HT has made an obvious mistake in what they report as the bone content of one of their products. As people are using that information when formulating their foods I would think the value of correcting that mistake would be clear.

I'm aware that the US data is your only trusted source.

Please do not presume to know things you are in no position to know.