Mince - raw or cooked?

I bought a tray of beef mince - frozen and a 'complete' meal for dogs (it had a few carrot chunks in it).

It was enough for 4 meals and I gave Maisy the first raw with some added veg and she ate it eventually with a lot of encouragement.
The second meal she sniffed at and left.

So I fried that meal up with a tiny bit of sunflower oil and she snaffled it down immediately.
I did the same with the other 2 meals with complete success and now I am wondering if it is worth getting some more.

My question is: Is she getting the nutritional value of the food by frying it or am I just feeding the equivalent of a McDonalds?
 
Just the same value , panic not !! I used to make all my own dog food ages ago , and would boil up mince and butchers scraps with added veggies , if anything its less fatty as you can skim off the excess from the top . For sheer convenience , I now buy frozen freeflo mince , just take out what I need each day , both have it raw on their kibble with some cooked veg x
 

Beanwood

Administrator
I think that sounds fine! More importantly Maisy enjoyed her food. The raw food was a "complete" therefore it contained all the necessary nutrients. Whilst cooking will break the meat down a little, only enough to make the food more digestible, which Maisy twigged all by herself! :happy:
 
That sounds great news. She really enjoyed it and it was good value too (£2.50) for 4 meals.
I'll definately get some more then, thank you for your replies.
She is so picky, honestly, I bought a tub of chicken livers and she wouldn't even touch them - who would think a dog would refuse liver?
 

Emily_Babbelhund

Mama Red HOT Pepper
I don't know if it has any scientific validity at all, but I don't ever feed mince (or hamburger as we Americans call it) raw. I just don't trust what's in there or how it's been handled. Most mince in Europe is a mix of pork and beef - very hard to find any that is 100% beef. So go ahead and cook without guilt, that's my vote!
 
If you’re buying raw mince that’s labeled as a complete meal, please make sure that the company has the necessary compliance registration. Anyone can sell mince and say it’s complete. If it’s not complete, you run the risk of not feeding the correct nutrition. If it’s all you’re feeding, over time it can have a detrimental effect on your dog. If you’re ensuring balance over time by ensuring Maisy is getting the right balance of calcium and phosphorous (from bones) and other nutrients, then it doesn’t really matter if you don’t know what’s in one or two meals. Mince—if it’s not from a reputable source—is notoriously full of the scraps no-one else would dare buy, as Emily also alludes to.
 

Emily_Babbelhund

Mama Red HOT Pepper
fresh chicken provides no nutritional benefit over chicken meal.
Just a word of warning to anyone in the US: "meal" (chicken meal, fish meal, etc) as a term on a dog food label is different in the US than the UK/Europe. "Meal" in the US refers to any part of the animal in any state of fitness, if that makes sense. Therefore "chicken meal" can be ground up beaks and fat scraped off the factory floor. It can include animals deemed too ill for human consumption. I believe it can even contain parts of animals other than chicken (though I'm not sure about that). If you see any type of "meal" on the label in the US, avoid it like the plague.

Edit: this information was true 10-12 years ago when was last living in the US. While regulations may have changed for the better, with the current administration, I doubt that's the case.
 
If you’re buying raw mince that’s labeled as a complete meal, please make sure that the company has the necessary compliance registration. Anyone can sell mince and say it’s complete. If it’s not complete, you run the risk of not feeding the correct nutrition. If it’s all you’re feeding, over time it can have a detrimental effect on your dog. If you’re ensuring balance over time by ensuring Maisy is getting the right balance of calcium and phosphorous (from bones) and other nutrients, then it doesn’t really matter if you don’t know what’s in one or two meals. Mince—if it’s not from a reputable source—is notoriously full of the scraps no-one else would dare buy, as Emily also alludes to.
Interesting point, however I do vary her meals a lot. Evening meals are different each day; tinned fish, raw beef chunks, chicken breast, tripe, lamb neck, natures menu chunks, in rotation, all with veg either cooked, raw or in biscuits. And now a bit of cooked mince now and again.
And as for complete meal, there was barely anything else in it so I added some veg. Marketing can be a bit cheeky sometimes.
 
My neighbours' dogs have lived well off of me thanks to Maisy's diva ways
Snowie originally wouldn’t touch liver. I tried feeding it a year later, and now he loves it. You should reserve feeding the neighbour’s dogs until she’s has a few chances to try the new food!! :)

Her diet sounds very nicely varied. Do you feed raw bones or give her a calcium supplement?
 
That made me smile @Shaz82 , the concept of not eating anything is alien to Reuben ! xx Sounds to me like Maisy has a wonderful varied diet x
I think I have the feeding regime sussed now, I have tried so many different things so I am now sticking with what I know she likes - apart from the chicken livers, that was an experiment, a failed one.
Sometimes I wish I had a Reuben type lab that wasn't so fussy. :mmm:
 
Snowie originally wouldn’t touch liver. I tried feeding it a year later, and now he loves it. You should reserve feeding the neighbour’s dogs until she’s has a few chances to try the new food!! :)

Her diet sounds very nicely varied. Do you feed raw bones or give her a calcium supplement?
Oh I don't give up that easily, I try several times with the same meal but she will actually skip a meal rather than eat it (unbelievably).
She has sometimes gone without and I did think that if she was really hungry then she would eat it. However, if she clearly does not like something then I would now rather give her something she does than force her to eat something she doesn't. I know, pandering is probably not good.
But I will bear it in mind that her tastes may change over time, the only offal she gets is tripe so I may try liver again. I tried ox heart which our other dog loved but Maisy wouldn't touch.

I give her lamb necks and beef chunks which have bone in them occasionally so she gets a bit, mostly though it is raw or raw from nature's menu selection. She gets kibble in the mornings with some dried sprats, sometimes a pizzle or dried oxtail (contains bone) or rabbit ear for lunch/snacks.
Raw is for evening meal, dry in the morning.
 
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