brookcove
Posted : 4/30/2009 10:23:51 PM
In general, what you want is a balance of a red meat, chicken, and pork. Red meat has almost all the nutrients your dog needs (pretty darn close), while chicken has almost none, but of course is cheap and easy to find in meat bone cuts suitable for small dogs. Pork adds a couple of vital nutrients like selenium - kidney is highest of all the readily available organ meats. It can be a bear to find but for a small dog thank goodness one package lasts about four months! Heart isn't an organ - it's muscle meat. I prefer beef heart to chicken because it's a great source of iron and copper. Throw in the pork kidney and a wee smidgen of (believe it or not) oyster (for zinc), and your MICRONUTRIENTS are almost all set. A chicken neck doesn't have quite enough meat. What I do is rotate between something like a neck or wing one day, and a drumstick the next day, for my eight pound Zhi. She gets a little heart meat, a teensy bit of the kidney, one eggie (white cooked, yolk raw) and a little fish each week, and then I supplement a little more copper and zinc. About once a week she gets a larger meaty bone, either lamb or pork, and once a week she gets a beef rib, which is mostly meat because she cannot chew most of the bone. Zhi gets almost no veggies or other things. This is all a really long way of saying variety is the spice of life, but it's good to have a plan, too.