Raw Meat vs Cooked Meat

A raw food diet provides your canine companion the foundation for a healthy immune system, resulting in healthier skin and coat, a reduction in allergies and an overall improvement in joint health and mobility.

Raw meat has an abundance of heat sensitive nutrients, such as trace minerals and amino acids that are destroyed during the cooking process. Dogs are carnivores and from a nutritional standpoint, carnivores thrive when they consume diets that are structured as nature intended: high in the best quality animal protein and fat, rich in vitamins and minerals.

Dogs have been designed by nature to not only tolerate, but to thrive on raw meat. People worry that their canine companion will get sick from eating raw meat, however a dog’s digestive system is stronger than that of humans and can tolerate bacteria that might otherwise be harmful to us.

But if using raw meat with Happy Dog just isn’t for you, we would recommend that you replace some of the nutrients lost during the cooking process with our natural vitamin supplement.

(safe handling of any raw meat is recommended)

Beef, Chicken or Turkey (ground or whole)

When choosing a meat type for your canine companion, we suggest you consider a few things:

Beef, chicken and turkey all have different fat contents. If your dog is young and very active or you are having trouble keeping weight on your dog, or feel like you are having to feed more food than normal, you might want to consider using ground beef 80/20 which is going to have a higher fat content than chicken or turkey. Our dogs tend to drop weight when we feed turkey or chicken as they are very active herding breeds and require more fat in their diet.

Ground meat is usually more expensive than whole meat such as chicken or turkey breasts or different cuts of beef. If you choose to use ground meat I would suggest looking for a local butcher or small locally owned grocery store that has a meat department and ask if they would custom grind or find you a source for ground meat and in most cases you will find that you can negotiate a pretty good price. I currently buy our ground beef at a local butcher/grocery store and it is custom ground in a large chunk (chili grind), packaged in 3lb’s and frozen for $1.69lb.

Buying your meat from a local store that has a meat department that does their own cutting will ensure that you are getting the best quality ground meat.

Whole chickens are usually pretty cheap and if you decide to use a whole chicken and are cooking your meat, make sure that when you cook your chicken you remove any bones and use the broth from that chicken to prepare your Happy Dog Food.

If you are using ground turkey, ask your local butcher/grocer if they can order that turkey in a 10lb frozen roll. If they are able to get that for you, have them cut that frozen turkey roll into 10 equal frozen parts, that way you don’t have to defrost the whole roll, you will be able to defrost just the amount you need to make your Happy Dog Food.