Green tripe (slaughterhouse in a box)

I think Flippy’s birthday caused some sort of time warp, as the week has flown by more quickly than it usually does.  We got a lot accomplished, including finally getting the oil changed on our poor, neglected vehicle, but I’ve done nothing on the computer except read.  Time to get my lazy butt back to blogging.  I sure wish there was a “thought-to-speech” program so I could just “think” my blog entries and then have them appear on the screen.

I’ve written before about how I’ve been trying to add some raw meat to Eli and Dante’s diets.  Unfortunately, the only (inexpensive) raw meat I’ve been able to find is turkey necks, and Carina has suggested that turkey neck bones might be too hard.  So, I decided I’d place an order with GreenTripe.com to get some raw meat specifically intended to be eaten by dogs.  I didn’t want to buy the actual green tripe, because I was just looking for snack items and not full diets, so I decided to buy some “yummy” gullets, raw tracheas, raw hooves, and green tripe-stuffed hooves.  The prices seemed quite reasonable.  I was slightly annoyed that there was no online ordering feature (not even PayPal), so I typed up my order and faxed it.

I’ll put my complaints/criticisms first, to get them out of the way.  I faxed my order in on Friday, July 14th, yet it didn’t get filled and shipped to me until Monday, August 7th.  The order was delayed because some items were out of stock, and because I’d ordered too much to fit into one box.  However, no one bothered to tell me these things until I emailed to ask about my order—I just kept waiting for something to arrive, because their website indicates that orders placed by Friday will ship the following Monday.  It would have been nice if someone had called me immediately (or emailed me) to tell me about my options.  I was eventually told my order would ship on July 31st, but when nothing arrived I again emailed them, and was told it wouldn’t ship until the 7th as some items were still out of stock.  It’s not the end of the world to take a long time to process an order, but I don’t think I’d want to rely on this company to provide my dog food on a regular basis.

Now, to the good parts.  When the order did finally arrive, everything was still cold and/or frozen, despite the Vegas heat.  It was all packaged in a styrofoam container with a cold pack.  The individual items were packed in plastic bags and then repackaged in plastic grocery store bags to keep mess and leakage to a minimum.  This was an excellent packing decision because the shipment looked like a slaughterhouse in a box.  Some of the items made me apprehensive, and that’s saying something.  The hooves were fine, but the tracheas were massive hunks of blood, bone, and flesh, weighing about a pound each.  I was envisioning a raw version of those small dried tracheas you find at Petco, but the fresh ones could probably be cut down to make three or four of the dried ones.  Most shocking of all were the raw gullets, which were MASSIVE—picture a bloody sphere about 6 inches in diameter.  Looking at the GreenTripe.com website you really get no perspective on the size of these body parts, and this order was a very eye-opening experience.

I initially offered both Eli and Dante the two smallest gullets to eat, which was a mistake.  Dante only ate part of his and left the rest in the dirt in the yard.  Eli ate all of hers, and then promptly threw it all back up.  I’m going to have to sharpen my cleaver and chop the gullets at least in half before I offer them to the dogs in the future, as one gullet is far too much food for one dog.  Both dogs really enjoyed them, though.  Tomorrow I may offer a raw hoof (unstuffed) to see what they think.  This one order will last us a very long time, especially if I can figure out how to cut everything into smaller pieces… perhaps that’s what I should use my miter saw for!

I don’t know if I’d order this stuff in the future, because the order process was a bit annoying, and because shipping is pricey ($30 for one box from California to Las Vegas, UPS ground).  I also think the items I ordered are too large for my dogs, and I’d rather buy sometime with built-in portion control.  This was an interesting experiment, though.  My next raw food snack order will probably be raw chicken necks from OnlyNaturalPet.com.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/12 at 10:04 PM

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  1. I looked all over your flickr site for pictures of cow guts and I can’t believe I didn’t find a single one!

    Posted by Nancy  on  08/13  at  05:31 AM

  2. Yeah, you make a good point :)  I think I was so stunned by the box of bloodiness that all I wanted to do was get the stuff cleaned up and in the freezer as quickly as possible!

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  08/13  at  09:33 PM

  3. Bwahahahaha!!! Sorry. :)
    I get some stuff from a Midwest supplier; their “tripe supreme” has gullet and trachea and stuff all ground in. Apparently a good source of natural glucosamine; one reason many people feed it.
    Smells awful but the dogs think it’s doggie crack.
    Most of what I buy I get from a couple of local butchers, usually by the case and very cheap. One can order me about anything I want, as long as it’s human grade.
    Nancy if you google cow guts and choose images, there’s lots of unappetizing photos!

    Posted by Carina  on  08/14  at  02:14 AM

  4. I chopped up a trachea today and I liked working with it.  It was very clean and tidy.  I doubt the gullets will be as pleasant!  The dogs seemed a bit iffy about the trachea, though—I don’t know if they didn’t like the taste, or didn’t like the texture, but they ate it very slowly.  I won’t complain about that.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  08/14  at  11:49 PM
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