How to portion raw dog food from your first 10 kg box

Your first box of raw food is 10 kg of meat landing on your doorstep at once. A bit of planning before it arrives makes the first week easy: where it goes, how to split it into meals, and how long it will last.

What’s in the box

Your order arrives chilled, so the first job is to get it into the freezer. How it’s packed depends on the product:

The blocks are cut by hand from a larger piece, so they vary a little in size. The carton always holds 10 kg, even if the number of blocks changes from box to box.

Before it arrives: freezer space

Each 10 kg carton of mixes, minces or bones is 36 × 27 × 18 cm, which takes up about 17.5 litres. Measure the gap you have in mind before the order lands:

• Kitchen freezer. Check the depth and height of a drawer or shelf. If the carton doesn’t fit whole, move the blocks into freezer bags or a lidded container, which lets you fit them into the space you have. Keep them apart from food for people.
• Chest freezer. These are sold by litres. On paper, a 100 litre chest freezer holds about five cartons. In practice it’s a bit less once you allow for the shape of the freezer and the room you need to get things out.

If you feed a big dog or more than one, a small chest freezer in the garage makes buying in bulk much easier.

How to portion raw dog food by product

Blocks: mixes, minces and Green Tripe

Weigh one block on the kitchen scales to see how close it is to 500 g. Then work out how many blocks a day your dog needs. A 20 kg dog eating about 450 g of mince a day is close to one block a day. A 40 kg dog is nearer two.

To serve a meal, take what you need from the thawed block with a spoon or scoop. If you’d rather not weigh every meal, weigh one scoopful once, then count scoops. Our guide to how much raw food to feed has the daily amounts by weight.

With a small dog or a cat, a block goes further. Thaw it in the fridge, keep what you’ll use in the next two to three days, and pop the rest straight back in the freezer. Raw meat thawed in the fridge can be refrozen.

Bones

Raw bones come as whole pieces packed together in the carton. Most people let the box soften a little, pull the bones apart and bag them up, so they can take out a piece or two at a time. Move them to the fridge the night before you plan to feed them. Our raw bones guide covers which bones suit which dogs. Most raw feeders give a bone a few times a week rather than every day.

Rolls

Rolls come ten to a carton, 1.8 kg each, so a carton of rolls is 18 kg. Each roll is raw mince in a tube, a bit like a big sausage of wet meat, so it doesn’t cut into neat slices. The easy way to feed them:

1. Thaw a whole roll in the fridge.
2. Empty it into a sealed container. Keep what you’ll use in the next two to three days in the fridge, and pop the rest straight back in the freezer in smaller tubs or bags.
3. At each meal, scoop out a measured amount with a cup or a large spoon.
4. When the roll is finished, wash the container and put the next thawed roll in.

Start thawing the next roll in the fridge a day or so before the container runs out, so it’s ready when you need it.

How long a 10 kg box lasts

Our feed calculator plans about 90% of the food as mince or a blend and 10% as raw bones. For a moderately active adult dog eating 2.5% of their weight a day, that works out like this:

These figures are for a box of mince or mix fed as the main meal, with bones on top. A carton of rolls is 18 kg, so it lasts 1.8 times as long: about 6 weeks for a 20 kg dog, 4 weeks for a 30 kg dog and 3 weeks for a 40 kg dog.

A quieter dog eats a little less and a working dog a little more, and the calculator works out your own dog’s figure. It also tells you how many boxes cover the number of weeks you choose.

A thawing routine that keeps you a step ahead

Thaw in the fridge, never on the bench, and keep two to three days’ worth thawed at a time. Each evening, or every couple of days, move the next lot from the freezer to the fridge. Our guide to thawing and storing raw dog food has the details, including how long thawed food keeps.

More than one box

• Oldest first. Put new cartons at the back or bottom, and use the oldest ones first.
• Mixing products. If you order two or three different products, keep each in its own carton or bag so you know what you’re thawing. Rotating them through the week gives your dog some variety.
• One delivery fee. Delivery is $5 an order whatever the weight, so a bigger order every few weeks spreads it further than a small one every week.
• Subscriptions. You can set an order to repeat every 1 to 8 weeks. Match it to how long a box lasts your dog. If the freezer is still well stocked, you can change or pause your subscription in My Account before the weekly cut-off.

Your first week

If your dog is new to raw, don’t serve full portions straight away. Mix a little into their current food and build up over a week or two. Our switching guide has a day-by-day plan. Wash bowls after each meal, and wash your hands and any surfaces the raw food touched, as you would with any raw meat.

Common questions

Will a 10 kg box fit in my kitchen freezer?

Measure first: the carton is 36 × 27 × 18 cm. If it doesn’t fit whole, the blocks can come out of the carton and stack loose.

Can I keep the food in the carton in the freezer?

Yes. The blocks sit in a liner inside the carton, and both go straight in the freezer.

Why don’t the blocks all weigh the same?

They’re cut by hand from a larger piece, so some come out a bit bigger or smaller. The carton still holds 10 kg in total.

What if my first box isn’t right?

Most of our customers already fed raw before they came to us, and we don’t expect any issues with your first box. If something isn’t right, get in touch within 14 days of delivery and a normal person will sort it out with you. That’s for your first order with us, once per household.

How do I feed a cat from a 10 kg box?

Thaw a block in the fridge, keep what your cat will eat in the next two to three days, and pop the rest straight back in the freezer. Our guide to feeding cats raw meat has the amounts.