Horse Meat

[sas]

Hi Guys,

What are your thoughts on Horse meat for dogs in terms of providing a good diet, I hear that it is low in protein, leaner than Beef and lower in energy.

Anyone have any information?

We're currently trying it out as a noval protein for a food trial. So far have been on it for 2 weeks and haven't seen anything different overall in the dog.

Oh and it's not cheaper than horse meat, it's actually a bit pricey!

Edited October 10, 2008 by sas

[Nekhbet]

I used to have bones from the knacker brought to me and they always reeked. I dont like the concept of horse only because they are not primarily grown as a food animal hence you dont know what medications and chemicals are in the meat when you buy it. At least anything that passes through a human abbatoire has standards but knackery meat could be full of anything.

That and the stink of the meat too it wasnt pleasant

[barkon]

Growing up in HK, one memory for me was that when the ponies were put down they were cut up for dog meat to be fed to the police dogs. Doesn't help you at all, but does show its been done for years, I wouldn't have thought they would feed them to working dogs if it was not beneficial.... maybe.

[Nekhbet]

horse meat can be cheap as there limited things you can do with it. In Yugoslavia my aunt rescued everything (she had up to large and giant breed dogs at her house) great danes, newfoundlands, GSDs etc and she bought them a horse a week to eat. Cheap ready source of protein since beef, lamb and pork was for people not dogs.

[pebbles]

A lot of years ago when I had the grooming, pet accessories, pet food shop I sold horse meat. Back then the knackery wouldn't take horses which had been euth.ed because of the chemicals. I had a few racing greyhound kennels which used to buy a large quantity of the horse meat weekly so I would assume there wasn't anything in it that could be swabbed in the greyhounds. Of course, things may have changed now.

[ellz]

Horse meat is very lean.

It is still widely used for racing greyhounds as well as in pet food. Hence the term "dogging" a horse.

[KitKat]

It's worth checking out Camel meat as well...it's becoming more readily available for pet meat

[sas]

I think it may be a bit lean, we usually give 800 grams of meat per meal and 400 grams of mashed veggie per meal but I think we'll need to add another 200-300grams of horse meat per meal as the boy is dropping weight...he's not an active dog either.

[Netti]

I purchased some horse meat some time ago from a pet food outlet.

My dogs who normally eat anything wouldn"t eat it.

It was very lean and dark in color, smelled alright to me but the dogs sniffed it and turned away.

I have nerver tried it again.

[Guest PixieOfWrath]

Mine have had it before with no issues, I didn't like the stink of it though!

[sas]

Yeah it stinks and I don't personaly like the texture and I can't help thinking about the Horses. I think after this lot we'll just go back to Beef which he was maintaining his weight really well on.