# Ideas for homemade chew treats?



## mrgoodkat (Oct 21, 2012)

Hey guys and gals,

our dogs currently get dentastix as a treat. They both absolutely love those (they start jumping around as soon as we open the drawer where they are kept.)

They are also getting homemade dried beef strips.
The problem now is that the dentastix make them rather smelly.

Any ideas on homemade "raw" chewy treats? Make thicker beef strips to dehydrate? Any other things they would need some time to devour?


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## Kathyy (Jun 15, 2008)

My local ethnic markets sell tendon cut quite short and cow ears. If you could get lengths of tendon they would be terrific dried for a chew as would ears. I bought a box of 12-18" long ostrich tendons one time and they were excellent dried. My markets also sell bleached tripe and tripas [aka] intestines. Perhaps they could be dried as a chew as well. I'd want to do that out of my living quarters as even bleached they smell. A company sells dried pork heart, perhaps you could find some heart to dry as well as beef strips. If you found whole beef shank you could strip the meat off lengthwise and make chews nearly as tough to eat as tendon. Don't give the bone to the dogs though, it is harder than dog teeth and can easily cause damage.

If you feed raw then feeding nice big raw things for chews works. Pig feet? Max won't eat them but they last a long time. The one time I bought raw ear it lasted as long as the dried ones. Max hasn't had whole tripe dried or wet but the raw tripas did take some time to chew and swallow which surprised me. Beef ribs are the dogs' favorites but they get more pork upper arm bones from the picnic shoulder roasts I buy. Ginger just chewed on one for 90 minutes yesterday then I threw out most of the bone.


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## SDRRanger (May 2, 2013)

They sell pig feet at my local grocery store...I've been wanting to get one for him, but I've been worried it'll be too fatty and give him the runs...do they work for most dogs?

I also picked up a couple frozen turkey necks that he'll get to enjoy.


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## Kathyy (Jun 15, 2008)

Supposedly they are fairly low fat. All that white stuff is ligaments and tendons and skin on feet ought to have a thinner fatty layer. Ratio of protein to fat is 1.8, not too shabby. I feed a lot of 85% 'lean' hamburger which only has a 1.2 ratio.
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/pork-products/2188/2

All the bone if your dog eats any of it might make for interesting soft bone poop. Max just got irritated at the skin he couldn't get through and sort of squeezed out the round bones and hid them in the towel he was eating on. Since there isn't a whole lot of iron and such poop tends to be light colored and oddly sometimes too much bone makes for lots of soft poop.

Treat it as part of his regular meal rather than a chew as they are a lot of food. 100 grams is 200 calories and a whole foot around here is a pound if I am remembering correctly so about 900 calories.


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## Salina (Sep 2, 2012)

i love raw pig ears. they are a great chew treat. i guess you could dehydrate those as well.


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## mrgoodkat (Oct 21, 2012)

Thanks for the all the Tips. 
I'm going to try to get some cheap tendons.

I found that there are already companies making tried cow ears as dog treats. But why are they all white? Do they bleach them before drying? I imagined them to be just dried cow ears, including the hairs and stuff.
Not sure I want to buy pre-made ears if they are bleached.










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## Flaming (Feb 2, 2013)

mrgoodkat said:


> Thanks for the all the Tips.
> I'm going to try to get some cheap tendons.
> 
> I found that there are already companies making tried cow ears as dog treats. But why are they all white? Do they bleach them before drying? I imagined them to be just dried cow ears, including the hairs and stuff.
> ...



The cow ears I buy are yellow-brown in colours, and usually have fur and all still on them. So I would assume that white ones are bleached.


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## gingerkid (Jul 11, 2012)

We went to the Asian market and they just happened to have lengths of beef digit tendons that were 6-8" long. It took FOREVER (6+ hours at 170F). I didn't take before photos, but here are some after shots. They shrank quite a bit. I'm trying to figure out for next time if there is some way I can tie them to the rack so they can't shrink quite as much. They're not so small that I feel unsafe giving them to Snowball, but I wish they were a bit bigger.


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## Kathyy (Jun 15, 2008)

Try splitting them lengthwise into a V shape before drying? Been a while, don't remember the tendons I had shrinking lengthwise, only crossways but they were quite long to begin with so wasn't too concerned about it at the time. Too bad they came out so short after all that work. The raw tendons I have seen at stores were much shorter and I never would have tried to dry those, you found some nice long ones.


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## Canyx (Jul 1, 2011)

Baked sweet potato.


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## doggiepop (Feb 27, 2014)

take a sweet potato and cut it up. place on a sheet pan
with parchment paper. place in the oven at 190 degrees.
cook for 6 to 8 hours. when done place in a bowl, no cover.


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## gingerkid (Jul 11, 2012)

Kathyy said:


> Try splitting them lengthwise into a V shape before drying? Been a while, don't remember the tendons I had shrinking lengthwise, only crossways but they were quite long to begin with so wasn't too concerned about it at the time. Too bad they came out so short after all that work. The raw tendons I have seen at stores were much shorter and I never would have tried to dry those, you found some nice long ones.


Yeah.  I might try again to see if I can decrease the amount of shrinkage through various methods; I also didn't trim any of the fascia off the tendons and I wonder if that had something to do with it. Thankfully Snowball is small enough that I have no real concerns about their size, and if I give them frozen they last a good few minutes.


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