Sourcing Ingredients for Homemade Pet Food

There are many ways to source ingredients and knowing the tricks of the trade can help reduce the stress and cost of sourcing. Below are the most common options for sourcing ingredients:

Local grocery stores, ethnic markets, and butcher shops are excellent ways to source ingredients for homemade diets. Ethnic or international markets in the USA often carry many organs, seafood, and cuts of meat that the average american grocery store does not carry. Butcher shops may also carry or offer custom ordering.

Grocery stores that have a meat counter will have an employee that manages the purchasing of meats for this department. They can often special order organs, muscular organs and meaty bones that aren’t normally stocked on request. 

There are two myths that commonly circulate about sourcing from grocery stores or ethnic and international markets:

Purchasing sale items in bulk and freezing them for later use is one way to reduce costs. If storage space is an issue, used storage freezers can easily be found cheaply on craigslist or facebook marketplace.

There are many raw pet food suppliers that sell the various muscle meats, seafood, organs, and meaty bones that can be used in a home prepared diet. Depending on the company, they may offer local pickup, delivery via a local route, or ship these items with dry ice directly to a home address. Shipping heavy, frozen ingredients is always going to be pricey but the convenience can be worth it for many pet parents. 

Below are common online suppliers that ship within the continental USA.

There are also many companies that ship seafood and meat for human consumption to your door. While these products are typically cost prohibitive, they are another convenient option for sourcing ingredients for homemade diets. Additionally, canned fish and shellfish can often be ordered from Amazon.com or a comparable website.

Raw feeding co-ops or facebook groups can be a great way to source ingredients for homemade diets. These Co-ops are groups of raw feeders who have come together to purchase in bulk from wholesale sources. This method offers the benefit of purchasing in bulk, lower wholesale costs, or sourcing hard to find ingredients. 

Finding a local co-op will require searching either on the internet or in raw feeding facebook groups. Additionally, raw feeding facebook groups dedicated to a specific state or region can also be good resources for finding local ingredients.

If a co-op or facebook group for a specific area does not yet exist, consider paving the way by starting one! Connecting with restaurant wholesale providers and business-to-business connections for bulk purchases is recommended.

Abattoir is another term for slaughterhouse. While the butchering of meat animals is not a pleasant subject, abattoirs handle this process in order to provide meat for groceries, butcher shops, and restaurants. Some abattoirs will sell directly to the public or are willing to save the organs on request that they would normally discard. These items such as heart, lungs, liver and other organs from the chest cavity of an animal are often termed “pluck” or “offal”.  

Additionally, some areas will have Game Processors that handle the breaking down and packaging of big game animals such as deer and elk. These processors may be willing to save meat scraps for raw feeders on request.

When asking for pluck or scrap from abattoirs and processors, it is important to be polite and to arrive on time. No-shows or impoliteness will make these businesses unwilling to work with raw feeders.

Small local farmers can be another great source of high quality ingredients. Even in urban and suburban areas, there are often some local individuals raising small meat animals such as rabbits or quail. Many people who raise their own meat animals do the processing themselves and may have offcuts and organs which would normally get discarded. 

Posting in local facebook groups, whether they are raw feeding groups or not, can be one way to connect with small farmers. Additionally, perusing local farmer’s markets and speaking with meat vendors is another option for making a relationship with local farmers.

Local hunters may be willing to save scraps and organs for raw feeders to prevent waste. However, this will depend on the person and the location of the hunt. If a hunter must carry out their meat from a remote location, they may not be able or willing to carry the added weight of the offal.

Freezer cleanouts are often the best way to obtain game meat or free meat. In areas where hunting and/or farming is common, posting in local buy and sell groups asking for meat from previous seasons that is being cleaned out can prove fruitful. Even meat that is several years old is safe to feed if it has remained frozen.