Well, as per suggested luscious & I had the started on chicken and we feel like we can move on to the next level an bought some ham, beef steaks, organs, necks etc, but is there anything we should avoid or lean more towards?

Can't think of any meat you'd want to avoid unless it's from questionable sources. Fish is the only thing that may be of concern due to the possibility of mercury but even that is fine on occasion. Just be sure to offer plenty of variety and I'm sure you'll be fine. I prefer to offer leaner meats most days of the week like poultry, and heavier meats like beef a little less frequently so as to keep them from gaining weight unnecessarily. But you can always adjust portions to accommodate weight gain or loss.

Just to make sure, did you get actual raw pork, or a smoked/cured ham? I've only seen completely uncooked pork meat marked as "ham" a couple times, and it's always a huge chunk of meat. Not that it's bad to get a huge chunk, just want to make sure that what you're getting is what you're expecting.

I don't know the rules about fish, because we're a fish free household, but as for other meats, we look for less than 80mg of sodium per 4oz serving. That and actually being raw are the only two guidelines (other than price) that we use for buying food. We've noticed that pork shoulder, or "picnic roasts" tend to be the best full price pork, and our dogs LOVE pork.

We get pork shoulder ALL the time! Best deal on pork! Despite the fact there's a HUGE bone in it. lol

Smoked /cured ham would not be a good choice because of the nitrates. "Fresh" hams as to what Kristina referred to are great.

arooroomom wrote:

We get pork shoulder ALL the time! Best deal on pork! Despite the fact there's a HUGE bone in it. lol

We get bone in from the grocery store, and boneless from costco. Both are a decent deal.

Just to throw it out there, it's important to know your dog as well. With Dante, he will tear the meat off the huge bone, and nibble a bit at the bone, and then be done. Isis, however, ate the meat and then got very protective of the bone, and ate almost the whole thing before we could get it away from her, and in doing so, got WAY too much bone that week.