ruthcatrin
Well-Known Member
I have no idea where that diet and fitness page got their numbers, but I'll be very surprised if that includes the BONE numbers (see below) for anything except weight. The link in the last article (to where he gets his numbers) doesn't work, so I can't look at where he got his numbers from (I'll note though, he lists bone IN MEATS, not just bone for his numbers).
The USDA page is great (I'm generally willing to trust it over most other pages that list nutritional data unless I can find a study that proves otherwise) but here's the thing, that doesn't include the content of the bone. They include numbers for meats cooked "bone in" cause cooking causes some of the nutrients to leave the bone and potentially settle into the meats, but in general humans don't eat bones (crack them and eat the marrow yes, bones themselves no).
Finding the actual nutritional data of BONE is a bitch. Not in the least because it varies depending on the density/softness of the bone. Harder bone has more calcium. But chicken bone is pretty soft. Before my computer crashed (twice) on me last year I'd managed to collect a few links that had data as to the calcium content of chicken bone. Unfortunately I've not been able to track most of them back down, and for the moment this is the only one I've got: Bone And Food Values For Raw Feeding Dogs | Dogs Naturally Magazine but the numbers quoted there for bone match what I remember seeing for chicken bone in the other links I had. And thats what I used to calculate the additional calcium of a drumstick in my previous post.
Bone % in a cut of meat is something every raw feeder has to understand (or well, I'd hope anyway). A bone in drumstick is neither 100% meat (including fat and possibly skin), or 100% bone. So when you're figuring your dog's diet you can't just assume that 100% of the weight of that drum you just gave him counts as his bone content. The "generally used" (by the raw feeding community) percentages of bone content in a bone in poultry cut are listed in the Dogs Naturally link above (thats not the best list though, doesn't break down skin on vs no skin, I can get you the full list if you need it). When I first started feeding raw I did some break downs of my own, pulling everything off the bone and weighing the bone and figuring out my own percentages. Alot of my local chicken had a slightly higher percentage of bone than the above percentages, but was close enough I don't argue them (and heck, I was doing it myself, maybe I didn't get all the flesh off the bone or something....).
The numbers I used above for the amount of bone in an average drum came from that set of numbers from when I was doing all that weighing etc. But I figured someone would ask, so while I was at the grocery yesterday I took this picture:
Thats 5 bone in drumsticks weighing in at 1.75lbs. So each drum averages at .35lbs or 5.6ounces or 158.757grams. Now, when I calculated the bone content above I just did 1/3rd, a shade higher than the 30% of the generally used numbers but closer to what I was getting when I was measuring, but for this I'll use that 30% figure. So, 30% of 158.757 is 47.63grams. If there's 1g of calcium for every 10g of bone thats 4.76g of calcium in the bone of the average drumstick in that package.
I'll add an additional note, its based on an assumption, but its one that ALL of us who feed raw assume: all of us who feed raw are doing so on the basis that its a complete nutritional diet for our dogs. Most of us add very little in the way of supplements, and most of what we DO add could be coped for in the diet if we had access to a wider variety of foods (such as fish oil = raw fish). According to the AAFCO the calcium numbers should be between 1% and 2.5% for a mature dog and as all of us mastiff folks (hopefully) know for a growing dog its 1% to 1.8%. Thats 1g to 1.8g of calcium for every 100g fed. That means (for prey model anyway) that for every 100g of total food we give our dogs 10g is bone and of that 1g to 1.8g is calcium. By those numbers that bone in the drumstick adds between 4.76g to 8.57g of calcium to the dog's diet.
The USDA page is great (I'm generally willing to trust it over most other pages that list nutritional data unless I can find a study that proves otherwise) but here's the thing, that doesn't include the content of the bone. They include numbers for meats cooked "bone in" cause cooking causes some of the nutrients to leave the bone and potentially settle into the meats, but in general humans don't eat bones (crack them and eat the marrow yes, bones themselves no).
Finding the actual nutritional data of BONE is a bitch. Not in the least because it varies depending on the density/softness of the bone. Harder bone has more calcium. But chicken bone is pretty soft. Before my computer crashed (twice) on me last year I'd managed to collect a few links that had data as to the calcium content of chicken bone. Unfortunately I've not been able to track most of them back down, and for the moment this is the only one I've got: Bone And Food Values For Raw Feeding Dogs | Dogs Naturally Magazine but the numbers quoted there for bone match what I remember seeing for chicken bone in the other links I had. And thats what I used to calculate the additional calcium of a drumstick in my previous post.
Bone % in a cut of meat is something every raw feeder has to understand (or well, I'd hope anyway). A bone in drumstick is neither 100% meat (including fat and possibly skin), or 100% bone. So when you're figuring your dog's diet you can't just assume that 100% of the weight of that drum you just gave him counts as his bone content. The "generally used" (by the raw feeding community) percentages of bone content in a bone in poultry cut are listed in the Dogs Naturally link above (thats not the best list though, doesn't break down skin on vs no skin, I can get you the full list if you need it). When I first started feeding raw I did some break downs of my own, pulling everything off the bone and weighing the bone and figuring out my own percentages. Alot of my local chicken had a slightly higher percentage of bone than the above percentages, but was close enough I don't argue them (and heck, I was doing it myself, maybe I didn't get all the flesh off the bone or something....).
The numbers I used above for the amount of bone in an average drum came from that set of numbers from when I was doing all that weighing etc. But I figured someone would ask, so while I was at the grocery yesterday I took this picture:
Thats 5 bone in drumsticks weighing in at 1.75lbs. So each drum averages at .35lbs or 5.6ounces or 158.757grams. Now, when I calculated the bone content above I just did 1/3rd, a shade higher than the 30% of the generally used numbers but closer to what I was getting when I was measuring, but for this I'll use that 30% figure. So, 30% of 158.757 is 47.63grams. If there's 1g of calcium for every 10g of bone thats 4.76g of calcium in the bone of the average drumstick in that package.
I'll add an additional note, its based on an assumption, but its one that ALL of us who feed raw assume: all of us who feed raw are doing so on the basis that its a complete nutritional diet for our dogs. Most of us add very little in the way of supplements, and most of what we DO add could be coped for in the diet if we had access to a wider variety of foods (such as fish oil = raw fish). According to the AAFCO the calcium numbers should be between 1% and 2.5% for a mature dog and as all of us mastiff folks (hopefully) know for a growing dog its 1% to 1.8%. Thats 1g to 1.8g of calcium for every 100g fed. That means (for prey model anyway) that for every 100g of total food we give our dogs 10g is bone and of that 1g to 1.8g is calcium. By those numbers that bone in the drumstick adds between 4.76g to 8.57g of calcium to the dog's diet.
