Bought a small starter food dehydrator off Amazon today for the sole purpose of making dehydrated treats for Sparky. Those bully sticks are getting expensive. So far we bought some chicken fillets, some skirt steak, and fruits to dehydrate. Anyone else got some good recipes for jerky?
DIY bully sticks....my mind boggles...... I am sure dehydrators have been mentioned before. Have you tried a search?
I'm gonna keep an eye out for them at the Asian Market. They do have alot of other stuff like pig ears, hooves, tails, etc.
I make jerky because Oban is on a limited ingredient diet. It's SO EASY. There are some complicated recipes for people but you won't put a lot of spices in it for your dog. All I do is bake sweet potato and mush it up and mix it with raw, ground kangaroo. Amounts don't matter, anything between 40/60 to 50/50 to 60/40 is probably what I do. Sometimes I put mushed raw banana in, either with the SP or just by itself. The banana alone ones come out flatter but I like to think he has a bit different taste now and then. Then, as per the butcher I buy the kangaroo from, I pat it into a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (use the dehydrating setting on my oven) out to a rectangle about 1/4 inch thick, score with my pizza cutter into strips and bake on low (140F is my lowest oven setting) crack the door and let it go for three hours. Flip the stuff over and anther three hours. Score again when I flip and then again when done. I have learned to store in a food safe freezer bag in my frost free freezer with the bag Open. If it's closed the stuff gets all frosty. Here's a laugh for you. One web site making jerky for dogs would have me measuring my strips with a ruler when I scored them, so they would be as even as possible. REally, to sell to people maybe but Oban doens't care. Oh, I mix it with my hands, much easier than a fork or some implement. Sometimes I put an egg in.
Ok so we loaded up the machine today. It's pretty tiny but we got a lot in. We boiled up some pre-cut chicken fillet strips, thin skirt steaks, beef liver in some chicken broth. Also loaded up some sweet potato cut up into long strips. The manual says that the room may smell from the food being dehydrated. I can already smell it. It also said not to mix different types of foods, but this is all for Sparky and he loves the different smells anyway. Besides the big companies have beef flavored sweet potato treats. Kept it simple. Let's see how it turns out in a few hours.
@xxryu139xx Sounds like a great idea as good quality dog treats are becoming expensive. Let us know! x Which machine did you buy as there are lots? Thanks x
Well they turned out ok. The fillets we used were too short and he would just end up gulping it down real quick. The slightly longer sweet potato crisps he would chew on but would last a good minute. Will need to make them a little thicker and find some longer sweet potatoes. I think the magic number for length is over 6 inches. We will try doing longer strips of steaks and maybe braiding them. It will take longer to dehydrate but hell its not for me. We still need to pick up some pig ears! Maybe i'll find some tracheas too. We bought the Hamilton Beach Dehydrator for $50 on Amazon. It's a small little thing.
