raw ground: how much does it cost, how much time does it take - my experience

I just finished making 4 batches of raw ground for my crew of 4. Since people frequently ask how much feeding raw costs and how much time it takes I thought I'd post my results for this go round. I didn't include the cost of supplements except for the eggs because their cost is pretty minimal. I do give a cost per day when using MCHA as the calcium supplement since it is pretty expensive and it is what I use.

Summary for 60.7 lbs of finished food:

time : 2 hr 45 minutes

cost : $2.57/lb or $0.72 per cat per day ($0.90 if MCHA used as calcium supplement)

Details:

All meat and organs were bought at my local grocery store. Some people have access to much cheaper sources but I think grocery store prices are more representative of what most of us have access to. The ingredients: beef chuck & shoulder roast, beef liver, beef heart, beef kidney, boneless/skinless chicken thighs, chicken hearts, chicken liver, chicken gizzards, pork tender loin, ground turkey breast. 

I grind all my meats and organs at once divided into what goes into each batch and then mix and package each batch. 

Time break down:

grinding: 30 mins (total all meats and organs)

mixing : 40 mins (10 mins per batch)

packaging: 1 hr 16 mins (24 mins per batch)

Grinding time includes trimming meat, cutting into pieces that will fit into the grinder and clean up. Mixing time is measuring supplements and mixing them into the ground meat and organs. Packaging is weighting 9 oz of food into baggies and flattening and sealing each baggie to squeeze out air and to make storing them more efficient. I don't include any clean up time for the mixing and packaging steps because it is minimal.

I ended up with 108 baggies with 9 oz of food per bag. This will last my 4 cats 54 days.

Thanks for this.
I fed prey model raw, and like you source most of my meats and organs from local grocery stores. I often buy meat at the 'sell by' date; accordingly, the price is marked down 30% to 50%. I haven't done an accurate cost analysis recently on poultry/chicken/pork, but I aim for about 70 cents or less. Supplement cost is minimal. I splurge and buy quail eggs--12 for around $4. Ritz gets one about three times a week.
I did recently timed that it took me around 25 minutes to cut down meat and organs and package them in around 15 small plastic containers. This will last Ritz 15 days.
I did do a cost analysis for rabbit: it is almost as cheap to buy rabbit chunks from Hare Today given how long it takes me to break down rabbit and how much I can't use (really hard to get to some of the meat).

I should try harder to find discounted meats. There is only 1 store I frequent that I know always has some and it isn't the one I usually get my raw food ingredients from because they don't have a good selection of organ meats.

That's 25 mins for enough food for 1 cat for 15 days? So that would be 100 mins for 4 cats for 15 days and 360 mins (6 hrs) for 4 cats for 54 days? Verses 2 hr and 45 mins for me? Ouch! I've always suspected that feeding prey model requires more preparation time than ground.  You have to do a lot more cutting which is time consuming.

Of course with ground the kitties don't get the marvelous dental benefit of gnawing on whole pieces!

Thanks both of you for the info!

I should try to look for cheaper sources of meat too, although there's substantial time and effort involved e.g. taking the subway to Flushing, and the cheaper it gets the more suspicious I am about quality.   I have been relying mainly on Hare Today and My Pet Carnivore because their grinds and meats, even with shipping, are easily less expensive than the groceries in my neighborhood. 

I made about 2 week's worth of food yesterday but tried something new:  instead of feeding separate meat meals to complement the high-bone-content whole animal grinds, I mixed chunked chicken and liver right in.   I paid $4.99/lb for boneless thighs, then parbaked them for 15 minutes.  I could have saved a bit by buying drumsticks for $2.79/lb and deboning, or hearts/gizzards (probably Purdue/Tyson in origin) for $2/lb.  The whole procedure took an hour including the baking and cleanup, but that included answering the phone once  and feeding little bites to my 10 month old kitten (Chai) who sat at my feet meowing the ENTIRE time.  (He has me well trained.)

Also I pack food into 1 cup Pyrex jars for freezing.  It takes more freezer space but they're easier to deal with come feeding time, and no worries about plastic leaching into the food.

I like the chunks for more reasons than only dental health actually.  My older cat Charlie developed gingivitis at one year so I suppose he's just prone to that, but I credit chunks with getting him to stop chewing furniture corners and such.  Charlie is such an enthusiastic chewer that the only toy mice I can leave out are the Petstages "dental" ones covered with netting.   Which didn't help with his teeth either, by the way.

I rarely buy bone-in meat because I'm paying top dollar (even if it is only $1.49 a pound...) for something I have to throw away--bone. Pork, beef, turkey and some chicken bone are too thick for Ritz to chew. I do buy frozen quail (price at $15 for six) and rabbit and freeze the bone I don't use for later batches.
Depending on the price, I love to buy chunks of meat, like stewing beef. All ready cut to size for me!
I will spend a little extra money on organs I buy at the farmer's market; they are fresher there (the vendor butchers his own chicken; their cats are fed raw).
Ritz too is prone to gingivitus; she's had two cleaning since she has been on raw. The vet said some cats are prediposed to gingivitus, and it could be related to poor nutrition when she was a kitten. (She and her litter mates were dumped on the streets when they were around four months old--and survived a 20 inch snow storm before being rescued. The other tenants fed them some cereal and milk, and rice occasionally.)

Buying bone-in meats does work out to be more economical than boneless, but not by a lot...as you said, you end up having to throw out quite a bit.  Plus there's the frustration factor.  If someone has a really good technique for carving meat off drumsticks or leg quarters please let me know!  The last time I did that, I ended up carving into the drumstick near the bony end with scissors, then using a knife to peel down the meat & tendons all around, like opening a flower.  All that work for maybe $1 a pound!  RItz/Cindy I think you have the right idea!

Stew beef here is $8/lb and up, and pork is $6 and up.  Yikes.  Buying the beef and pork trim from Hare Today would make it worthwhile to buy a freezer, if I could only figure out where to put it.  How many pounds can fit into one of those tabletop 24" cube freezers?

I kind of take my time when making food, but no worries there.  Like some of you I get my meats from the grocery store.  I get bone-in chicken thighs at $0.99/lb, pork I get BOGO or sell-by dating, and chuck roast (beef) I get BOGO.  Another advantage I get is fuel perks on my grocery card (5 cents off a gallon for every $50 spent at the grocery store).  I need to get some bills paid down and then hopefully start ordering rabbit and such from HT.  I couldn't do raw economically without a deep freezer.  Having a grinder helps too, as does saving eggshells for the boneless meats like pork and beef.

My problem with bone in meat is two fold: I tend to cut the meat.... and somehow my finger gets in the way! And I have some wrist/shoulder problems that get aggravated when I cut too much. A really important tool is a really sharp pair of scissors and/or knife. I found a Wusthof brand cutting shears and knife at estate sales. I also find it easier to get more meat off bone if the meat is still somewhat frozen.
Wow @sophe1 that's some expensive meat where you live. Except for rabbit, quail and sometimes turkey (turkey rarely goes on sale), I try not to spend more than $2 per pound--which in my case works out to be around 50 cents per day.
I've been thinking of buying a small freezer (Craigs List frequently has them for sale), but the only place I could put it would be in my garage, and I'm not sure I have enough electrical current/load in that area. I can use my brother's freezer.

Eeek, I didn't even think about power issues!!

I was eyeing a compact chest freezer from Avanti that I probably don't have room for, and I just checked, it draws only 10 amps.  That shouldn't cause problems if it's the only major appliance on the circuit.  I was thinking about one of those 24" cubes instead, but I'm not sure it will hold enough to be worthwhile.  I borrow freezer space from my mother but it's kind of a pain to truck back and forth.

My 14 cubic foot GE upright freezer is plugged into a standard outlet.  If that helps...

Not sure if HT's prices fluctuate based off demand or once they go up they stay up because a lot of their grinds went up a dollar a pound in 4 months time.

I have a cat that can't eat any poultry so that make feeding him cost almost twice as much as a cat eating chicken and turkey.

I don't follow HT's prices regularly, but do access their site to check on sales/specials. I know the price of beef has risen across the board (i.e, grocery stores).

Ground rabbit is over $12 a pound now [emoji]128513[/emoji] The bone in is $6. I tried cutting the bone percentage down but one of my cats just can't handle ground bone at all. He struggles too much trying to go in the box.

Unless someone has an IBD cat that must be on raw, I'm starting to think homemade is cost prohibited. Add .50 to each pound for Alnutrin and with shipping it all is more expensive than NV instinct. That's not counting the time we spend making it.

Chicken and beef are reasonable but my cats can't have either and the one that can have turkey, doesn't like it. I'm kinda frustrated

Hello everyone who makes their own ground food.

How do you account for bone in recipes that use beef and pork? I'm going to be transitioning my kitties to a raw ground diet and have thus far been unable to find any recipes that aren't chicken, turkey, or rabbit.

Thanks!

mlle librarian said:

 
Hello everyone who makes their own ground food.

How do you account for bone in recipes that use beef and pork? I'm going to be transitioning my kitties to a raw ground diet and have thus far been unable to find any recipes that aren't chicken, turkey, or rabbit.

Thanks!

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I use finely ground eggshells.  Practically free if you add yolks to the food.  Here's a great thread about it:  http://www.thecatsite.com/t/263426/...hydroxyapatite-to-balance-meat-or-meat-organs.  I use the same vitamin mix as I do with Dr. Pierson's recipe at www.catinfo.org.

Thanks, peaches! I have done some more browsing and see that there are many options. 

peaches08 said:

 
I kind of take my time when making food, but no worries there. 

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Yup, me too.   Since this thread is meant to address the question of both the cost and the time required to make home-made raw I'd like to add that I find that with most things it goes faster if I take my time. I think I'm more efficient if I slow down and really pay attention to what I do and how I do it. Working efficiently trumps working fast!

mschauer said:

 
Yup, me too. 

 Since this thread is meant to address the question of both the cost and the time required to make home-made raw I'd like to add that I find that with most things it goes faster if I take my time. I think I'm more efficient if I slow down and really pay attention to what I do and how I do it. Working efficiently trumps working fast!

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Very true!

I forgot to mention for those worried about fingers, this is the knife I use to debone chicken thighs:  http://www.wokshop.com/HTML/products/cleavers/thai-kiwi-knives.html. I use the pointed 11" knife for $4.95.  It works great to cut meat from the bone but not my fingers.  I use poultry shears to cut through bones and soft tissue like tendons/ligaments.