[Dailydrool] Question for those who dehydrate treats

[Jennifer Martin]

Pam,
My dehydrator has a temperature control. I prefer to do that, but you did
even one step safer. You cooked the chicken. I like that even better.
Really and truly the dehydrators just don't get quite hot enough to be safe
for the meat for as long as it takes to dehydrate the meat unless you get
the pieces really small and really thin. I have been known to do it both
ways. If I don't cook the meat first, I make sure the pieces are very small
and well handled before dehydrating. The chicken will get white spots where
it is over done. If it had white spots on it after you had cooked it and
had just taken it out of the dehydrator and wouldn't scrape off I would bet
it wasn't mold. It was just spots that were over done. I would still store
it in the fridge or freezer.  I have three dogs and I will keep a few days
worth out. I keep the rest in the freezer. Of course I have two dogs
allergic to chicken, so mine are 1 pound ground beef with a cup of pureed
veggies added in and then scooped up in a small cookie scoop and flattened.
 Depending on weather, it will take 12-18 hours for them to dry. The dogs
go nuts over them. Those are with the temp set at 170 degrees. The
dehydrator hold like 10 pounds of meat. I can only get one pound of meat
and 1 cup of veggies in my food processor. Good luck with the chicken!

Jennifer, momslave to Beauford, Bugsey and Browyn the Fairy Princess


On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 9:42 AM, <dpmcquade at verizon.net> wrote:

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> I have had a Ronco dehydrator for some time now, but I was afraid to try
> drying out meat for dog treats. The directions that came with the unit said
> something about scraping off any mold that formed. So it took me a long
> time to get up the courage to try them.
>
> Last week, I finally tried it. I cooked the chicken first, to be on the
> safe side, then let it dehydrate for part of the afternoon and overnight.
> When it was finished, I found some white stuff on the treats that didn't
> really scrape off. Since I know mold is very bad for dogs, I tossed the
> treats.
>
> Can anyone give me some help on this? Did I throw out perfectly good
> treats? Should I not have cooked them first? Is there a trick to doing this
> that I've missed?
>
> I don't want to hurt Horton, but he has an ongoing, as-yet-unidentified,
> occasional stomach thing, so I'm afraid to give him treats, since I don't
> know if the problem's food related. His i/d food is chicken based and
> doesn't seem to cause trouble, so I thought that plain, dehydrated chicken
> might work. But now I have this problem.
>
> I will not feed any commercial chicken treats that come from China, since
> my dogs once got very sick on some Chinese treats. I have only found one
> brand made in the USA, and I'm about to try them out, but they look as if
> they may be rather oily. I'd like to be able to do my own quality control.
>
> Help, anyone?
>
> Pam, food slave and treat maker for the Dashing Bassets
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