Using the Whole Buffalo: Dog Bones

(Titan as a puppy)

Anyone who knows us knows that our pets are like children to us. Part of the reason behind our homesteading journey is to be able to feed our animals a species appropriate diet. While we are building our homestead they are still eating commercial food but we are trying to make moves in the right direction. Naturally a dog would remove meat from the bones of an animal and through that process their teeth would get cleaned.

For the first few weeks we just threw away the bones after the dogs were done with them. But then I realized I could make broth with them. See, our dogs never manage to get all the bone marrow out and it felt like a waste to just throw it out. Then it hit me, why not make bone broth? Sure we couldn’t eat it but the dogs could. Surely it has to have the same health benefits as it does for humans?

I did a little searching and found that it does. It’s full of minerals and good for the joints among other things!

What We Do

To simulate the cleaning of a kill, we purchase some cheap dog bones at the grocery store. They aren’t the best quality but it’s something. Of course you can buy bones from cows that have been grass fed, hormone free etc. The only ones we can get in our area are $7 apiece and we can’t afford $21 a week at this point so we do what we can.

Our dogs get them for 20 minutes after dinner for 3 days. After 3 days I put the bones in a crock pot over night with a couple cap fulls of apple cider vinegar. In the morning I use a funnel and a strainer to put the stock into 3 pint jars, any extra goes in a pyrex container and put in the freezer in case the store is out of bones one week. We try to pick the most recently packaged bones as well.

The package we buy has 3 bones in it. One of them is a joint of some kind and contains a few smaller bones. We do not give this one to our dogs in case they were to choke on them so we buy 2 packages and make broth with the extra bones.

Every evening the dogs get some poured on their dinner. Our one dog has had a poor appetite ever since we rescued him. Originally we melted coconut oil onto his food, however that is rather expensive. Since we started making the bone broth we have been using it to bribe him to eat his food and it works! (He has been checked out by a vet and is in good health, he’s just picky) We have found that 3 pint jars is enough to bribe him at every meal and to supplement the other’s dinner for one week.

Later on down the road we will be buying a bokashi and will break down the bones in that. Some people compost them but because of the unsure nature of my husband's job we have no idea how long we will be here and prefer not to compost things that will take many years to break down!

And there you have it. How to use all of your dog bones! I love finding ways to utilize every piece of something.

(the darker colored one is from the joint bone broth)

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