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THE MATH

In general math can be really daunting, but for many raw feeding math seems to be even more overwhelming, but in all honestly it's actually really simple.

Cacti

Everyone meet Cricket. She is a French Bulldog  and weighs 30 lbs.

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Since our frenchie is an adult we want to feed her 3% of her body weight per day. If she were a puppy, you would do follow a different percentage but the math would still be the same. 


3% of 30 lbs or 30 x 0.03 is  0.9 lbs or 14.4 oz per DAY.

 

To figure out how much of each category you are to feed you pretty much do the same math with each category. A balanced meal or batch is 80% meat, 5% liver, 5% other secreting organ (pancreas, kidney, spleen etc.) and 10% bone.

So you will want to take the amount fed per day (14.4 oz) and multiple by these percentages. You should get:
14.4 oz * 80% (or 0.8) = 11.5 oz of meat
14.4 oz * 5% (or 0.05) = 0.7 oz of liver

14.4 oz * 5% (or 0.05) = 0.7 oz of other secreting organ
14.4 oz * 10% ( or 0.1) = 1.44 oz of bone

Meat can be anything muscle meat so this includes typical cuts of meat such as loin, stew, breast, thigh etc. but also non secreting organs like lungs, tongue, heart and gizzards. The meat section can be made up of an assortment of this. I highly recommending making a list of percentages for yourself that you can use as a guideline for each of your meals. For example mine is:

 

50-59% meat
15% heart 

0-9% gizzards

6% egg

 

Bone will be the more complicated math. Each bone in the animal has a different meat to bone ratio (chicken wing vs. chicken neck) and also different from animal to animal (chicken neck vs turkey neck). Regardless the math is fairly simple as well. You will find a list of Meat to Bone Ratios on our website  for now lets work with a chicken neck.

 

The average chicken neck (without skin) weighs 1.45 oz.
They consist of 31% bone and 69% meat. 
To figure out how much bone is in a single neck multiple the weight of the neck (1.45 oz) by 31% (or 0.31)
1.45 oz * 0.31= 0.44 oz


We do the same to determine the amount of meat on the neck
1.45 oz * 0.69= 1 oz

*Note the amount of meat on the neck will be factored into the meat section required per day.

To determine how many necks you would need per day we take the bone requirement (for this dog it would be 1.44 oz) and divide by the amount of bone in one neck (0.44 oz)
1.44 oz/0.44 oz= 3.27 necks (you can round to 3.5 as the weight is just an average)


To find the amount of meat that you will be getting from the necks multiple 1 oz (the amount of meat on each neck) by the number of necks
1 oz * 3.27 necks = 3.27 oz
Than subtract this from the amount of meat to get the amount of meat you still need to feed

Your requirements should now look like this (if you are using chicken neck as the bone)
 

11.5 oz of meat (with 3.27 oz coming from the chicken necks, you will need 8.2 oz from other muscle meats)
0.7 oz of liver

0.7 oz of other secreting organ(s)
1.44 oz of bone which is found in 3.27 necks

 

You can multiple by 7 to figure out how much your companion needs per week and balance their meals over time. Heck you could even figure out how much to feed for the month! 

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The above math is perfect for individual companions, but sometimes you may have many pets and would like to make a large batch of food. Click here to learn more.

Maybe you only have a few ingredients and want to work around that. Click here to learn more.

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