Beef Jerky Homemade treats or our Healthy dried Beef Jerky?
I personally started selling dog treats when I looked around and found that I couldn’t afford decent ones for my own dog all those years ago. I have my dog on a raw meat diet (plus bones and offal) but I wanted something to supplement that, something different, something just as healthy.
The reason I am looking at homemade dog treats today, such as beef jerky, was recently in my local dog park I was walking with an owner who makes their own. They also have access occasionally to fresh rabbit which is great for dogs (as long as it is mixi or other virus free) .. but they swore by their homemade treat method. And this is it:
They simply buy ‘sizzle steak’ from the local supermarket and dry it themselves. They choose sizzle steak (something that I have never heard of until they told me and my wife bought some home) because it is nicely thin cut steak, fairly ideal for drying.
However one obvious disadvantage is that their supermarket meat regular price in bulk was $9 for 400g. ($22.50 per Kg)
Because meat is 75% water, if you dehydrate it you get approximately 25% dry weight meat. To be generous lets consider you try your sizzle steak to 35% dry weight. Then that $22.50 now represents 350g. And the price per Kg of your HOMEMADE beef jerky now costs you $64 per dry Kg.
Now while we sell our dried beef jerky in our online store for a little over $40 a Kg, that’s not the whole story. The Meat we sell is 100% Australian beef, but it is dried to the level that it can be stored for up to a year in people’s pantries (no light, cool and air tight). Even when people allow air access to this beef jerky, it tends to just dry a little more, not go off.
There is also another major hidden major advantage over homemade meat dog treats. With so many people citing the reason that they don’t feed their dogs raw meat diet because of their imagined health risks, why would they risk feeding their dogs homemade meat dried treats that they do not have professional qualifications in drying?
Also some people don’t like the hassle of using an oven and smelling their kitchen out, or finding a safe pest free environment to air dry the steak. And of course with the time is money concept, you need to figure your labour into the price of that homemade dog treat.
The other major benefit of buying quality (low priced) beef jerky for dogs, is that it is thinner than most people dry their own meat, and it is tougher (longer chewing). A dog loves the primal satisfaction of ripping meat apart and chewing on bones. This is how they also strengthen their jaws and naturally clean their teeth and gums. The last thing you want to do is pay more money, for a riskier homemade treat, and have it fall apart as they eat it.
The last major reason that 97% of manufactured dog food feeders will want to supplement their dogs diet with meat jerky is that kibble has up to 30% questionable quality meat, and meat Jerky is 100% meat. I have written numerous articles on this site about the importance of meat based protein in a carnivore dogs diet.
And that ladies and gentlemen are just a few of the reasons why we always recommend buying your healthy dog treats (and beef jerky) from the professionals (us).