Manual Meat Grinder -- Making Raw Cat Food

After discovering raw cat food diets, my biggest concern was meat grinding. I was sure there was a way around it and that in fact I don't need to buy a grinder and grind meat. But I was wrong. I quickly learned the importance and necessity of bone in a cat's diet. So I then started researching grinders. Ehhh, the thought of buying a large expensive grinder was not attractive to me. As I am 90% vegetarian the whole process was not appealing.

Many people use the Tasin TS8 Electric Meat Grinder and swear by it for making raw cat food. It is about 8 kilo or 15lbs and sells for $150 on onestopjerkey.com.  And if I lived in the US I probably would have bought it due to the great reviews I read. But I don't, I live in Europe and do not have a huge kitchen, the correct voltage and of course there is the shipping expense. I started looking at local shops and online for grinders but I could not find anything even close to the Tasin grinder. I knew I wasn't going to buy any expensive grinder not designed for bones and then have it break. Then one day I was in a Swiss Army surplus store and saw a manual meat grinder for $25.  Obviously it is not designed to grind bones but I didn't care, for that price it was worth the try.

And it worked! It of course takes a bit of muscle to use. But my husband and I made our first batch of  3 kilo consisting of chicken thighs and chicken organs in 2 hours including clean up. Doing it alone would have been very difficult due to the clamp.  It was necessary for one person to grind while the other held the machine and inserted the meat. And it did move quite a bit which was difficult at times. After 3 months of use (3x),  I decided we needed to upgrade and get something without a clamp.

This is the grinder I purchased online from this supplier in Germany.

Specifications:
Materials: cast iron, steel, and wood
FSWF05: Size 22

• Total Dimensions: approx. 31 x 25.7 x 14.2 cm
• Funnel opening: approx. 13 x 11.5 cm
• Ring diameter Ø: approx. 8.5 cm
• Weight: approx. 4.1 kg
• Price 20£
   

The size works great and I think the 32 would be even nicer.  But the most important thing to look for is a base you can screw down like this one, do not bother with anything with a clamp.We then bolted it into a wooden cutting board which is easy to remove to clean.


I found a similar grinder with the same dimensions and same materials here on Amazon.

We make a batch of cat food about every 4 weeks and have used this grinder about 11 times the last year and it continues to work great.

*Please note I have only used this for poultry and rabbit, I've never tried with anything larger such as pork or beef.

When I was doing my raw food research I couldn't find anyone out there who used a manual grinder and couldn't understand why.  When I asked people in forums everyone was very doubtful it would work. I would love to know if any of you use a manual grinder like this one? Or do you use an electric? Or if there are any sellers in Europe selling anything close to theTasin TS8 Electric Meat Grinder I would be curious to know.

Read why I feed raw here.See my raw chicken recipe here
Thanks for reading :-)