Denise - I always give them the bone meal in the mornings as I thought that gave them all day to digest it and it wasn't heavy on their stomachs over night. Do you think it matters?
Rhona: to be honest, don't know and not experienced enough to hazard a guess! It was in Kymythy Schultze's book - she actually advocates only feeding once a day, in the evenings after they've had their walk and rationalised it on the basis that bone is so dense, even when chewed, that they need time to digest it without any meaningful exercise intervening. But I know one of the experienced BARF'ers said on a post in the last few weeks that she does it like you - in the mornings, so they aren't sleeping on a heavy tum.
Views??
Sam - the Nature's Menu suggestion sounds like a good one to get you started. Other tips, for when you move to home-prepared stuff:
1. If you don't have good knives/meat cleaver, then ask the butcher to cut the bones to size - e.g. 3 ribs per portion of lamb breast, two rings of oxtail at the fat end, three rings at the skinny end, chopping marrow bones to size.
2. Clear space in your freezer for all the individual meal/portion bags before you start!
3. Get your freezer bags out, torn off the roll and opened out, plus the tag/tie things torn off and in a pile before you start. I use the bags to pick up the meat if I'm in a hurry, so that I'm not washing my hands every minute when I need to stir a pot or answer the phone.
4. Get a clean and dry ice cube tray ready for spooning the blended/processed raw veg & fruit into, cover with cling film and freeze.
5. Lots of handcream afterwards - one way or another, you'll end up washing your hands umpteen times!
Not sure how everyone does it, but when I have a "prep session", I have it all ready to go (minced meat, bones, whizzed fruit and veg, heart) and divvy it up into portion sizes and into the bags, then freeze each one as a complete meal. I also use the ice cube tray suggestion of Rachel's, to use up the extra processed raw veg. Then if I need to buy extra mince, I can thaw a mince-only portion plus a couple of ice cube sized bits of veg.
The first time I did it, took me two hours. Have now (only seven or so weeks later) got it down to 45 mins - to prep two weeks' worth of food.
Are people feeding an "offal only" meal - like heart or liver - on its own? I've been chopping it up and adding it to the mince each day in small portions. Does it make any difference??
Denise