- Joined
- Dec 21, 2018
- Messages
- 68
- Purraise
- 62
Hi all. I just registered with this website to write this, so I don't even know if I'm posting this in the right place.... but I just wanted to somehow share this important info with the raw feeding community.
I'm new to making raw food, and brand new to grinding bone; in fact my grinder just arrived in the mail a couple days ago and I haven't even used it yet.... but before even figuring out how to use it I needed to figure out how to calculate bone properly.
This is where I ran into a lack of information problem because the standard recipes only give you an easy calculation for chicken thighs (remove 20 - 25% of the bones). I've also read (on feline-nutrition.org) that bone should make up 7 - 10% in weight of the recipe.
I know I'll be using cornish hens a lot so I set out to find what percentage of bone is in a whole cornish hen. I searched the Internet and found multiple references to the same "fact"; over and over again I come across statements that cornish hens are 39% bone.*** HERE'S WHERE THE ALARM BELLS GO OFF!*** I had deboned a cornish hen just once before but even without careful measuring, it was obvious that little carcass was NOWHERE NEAR 39% bone.
So tonight I did what I had to do to get a fairly accurate calculation of bone % in cornish hen. I weighed a whole cornish hen - it was 27 ounces, or 1 lb 11 oz. I carefully cut away as much meat as possible from the skeleton of a cornish hen, to use later. Then what I couldn't cut away I scrubbed away with a small, metal bristled barbecue brush until I'd removed almost all of the meat bits from the bone (there were some small amounts I could not remove from the spine and ribs). I then weighed the skeleton. It weighed 5 ounces. Considering there were still some tiny bits of meat in places, I'm assuming the actual weight of the skeleton to be about 4 - 4.5 ounces.
I did the math. The result? This cornish hen was only about 16% bone!!! NOWHERE NEAR the 39% that is proclaimed all over the Internet. The really alarming thing is that PEOPLE ARE USING THESE INNACURATE PIECES OF DATA TO (MIS)CALCULATE THEIR BONE TO PHOSPHORUS RATIOS. I read numerous old threads (one on this website) where people stated they were using the 39% bone figure as a fact when using cornish hen, and calculating their calcium and meat amounts around that figure. One person was openly pondering that it didn't "seem like enough" bone.
The moral of the story is: Do your own research when something doesn't seem right, or if you're not sure. DON'T trust the charts you find online or anywhere else about the %'s of bone in various cuts of meat, if they can be that wrong. I read somewhere else that rabbits were 9.5 % bone, but Ive heard that rabbits are particularly bony, and the one time I ate rabbit it seemed to have a Ton of bone in it, so that figure looks Way Off to me too. Probably a good idea to dissect - at least ONCE - the particular brands and cuts of meat you're going to use frequently to calculate the % of bone in each. (FYI, the brand of cornish hen I'm using is Patti Jean) I'm sure bone percentage varies to some degree from animal to animal based on various factors, but this particular discrepancy is SO blatantly extreme that it defies basic common sense. I mean 39% is close to half.... I can't image that ANY edible bird has Ever been made up of almost half its body weight in bone. Unless it was starving to death.
I hope this helps somebody out there to avoid potentially dangerous mistakes in calculating the bone % in their homemade food. I just wanted to get the word out.
I'm new to making raw food, and brand new to grinding bone; in fact my grinder just arrived in the mail a couple days ago and I haven't even used it yet.... but before even figuring out how to use it I needed to figure out how to calculate bone properly.
This is where I ran into a lack of information problem because the standard recipes only give you an easy calculation for chicken thighs (remove 20 - 25% of the bones). I've also read (on feline-nutrition.org) that bone should make up 7 - 10% in weight of the recipe.
I know I'll be using cornish hens a lot so I set out to find what percentage of bone is in a whole cornish hen. I searched the Internet and found multiple references to the same "fact"; over and over again I come across statements that cornish hens are 39% bone.*** HERE'S WHERE THE ALARM BELLS GO OFF!*** I had deboned a cornish hen just once before but even without careful measuring, it was obvious that little carcass was NOWHERE NEAR 39% bone.
So tonight I did what I had to do to get a fairly accurate calculation of bone % in cornish hen. I weighed a whole cornish hen - it was 27 ounces, or 1 lb 11 oz. I carefully cut away as much meat as possible from the skeleton of a cornish hen, to use later. Then what I couldn't cut away I scrubbed away with a small, metal bristled barbecue brush until I'd removed almost all of the meat bits from the bone (there were some small amounts I could not remove from the spine and ribs). I then weighed the skeleton. It weighed 5 ounces. Considering there were still some tiny bits of meat in places, I'm assuming the actual weight of the skeleton to be about 4 - 4.5 ounces.
I did the math. The result? This cornish hen was only about 16% bone!!! NOWHERE NEAR the 39% that is proclaimed all over the Internet. The really alarming thing is that PEOPLE ARE USING THESE INNACURATE PIECES OF DATA TO (MIS)CALCULATE THEIR BONE TO PHOSPHORUS RATIOS. I read numerous old threads (one on this website) where people stated they were using the 39% bone figure as a fact when using cornish hen, and calculating their calcium and meat amounts around that figure. One person was openly pondering that it didn't "seem like enough" bone.
The moral of the story is: Do your own research when something doesn't seem right, or if you're not sure. DON'T trust the charts you find online or anywhere else about the %'s of bone in various cuts of meat, if they can be that wrong. I read somewhere else that rabbits were 9.5 % bone, but Ive heard that rabbits are particularly bony, and the one time I ate rabbit it seemed to have a Ton of bone in it, so that figure looks Way Off to me too. Probably a good idea to dissect - at least ONCE - the particular brands and cuts of meat you're going to use frequently to calculate the % of bone in each. (FYI, the brand of cornish hen I'm using is Patti Jean) I'm sure bone percentage varies to some degree from animal to animal based on various factors, but this particular discrepancy is SO blatantly extreme that it defies basic common sense. I mean 39% is close to half.... I can't image that ANY edible bird has Ever been made up of almost half its body weight in bone. Unless it was starving to death.
I hope this helps somebody out there to avoid potentially dangerous mistakes in calculating the bone % in their homemade food. I just wanted to get the word out.